InVitro Will Deliver ID Kit Info Directly to New Moms

InVitro International, which sells a product for identifying abducted children, will start marketing it directly to new mothers in hospital maternity wards.

“Virtually 100% of the new moms who’ve seen the product say, ‘Where can I buy it?’ ” says W. Richard Ulmer, chief executive of the Irvine-based maker and marketer of safety-related products.

Experts in child abductions and obstetrics say the item has merit but might have limited usefulness. They wonder whether the product is aimed more at assuaging parents’ fears that a child might be kidnapped, rather than helping identify a child who has been found.

The product, dubbed “Guardian DNA,” relies on genetic material for positively identifying a child. Experts say that many hospitals have abandoned the traditional and mostly useless method of taking a baby’s footprint and that use of such genetic-based methods can be highly accurate.

Next year, says Ulmer, new mothers in most hospitals nationwide will receive product brochures and mail-in coupons for ordering it for $49.95--a discount from the regular price of about $75. The company will send out a package containing a cotton swab for collecting cells from inside a baby’s cheek, a vial of preservative for storing the sample and an individualized bar code for identifying it, the company says. The package contains a booklet for keeping identifying information on the baby, including a matching bar code, and an 18-minute video of tips on child safety. The mom is supposed to mail in the vial for long-term storage and keep the booklet in case her child is abducted.

Ulmer says his service would be useful in a case in which an estranged father kidnaps a child, the mother locates the child years later, and the father claims the child isn’t hers.

But Georgia Hilgeman, executive director of Vanished Children’s Alliance, a nonprofit San Jose foundation that assists in thousands of cases of missing children a year, notes that in about half of the cases the abductor is female and often is the mother. In addition, Dr. Sharon Phelan, a University of Alabama teacher involved in setting national professional guidelines for obstetricians, says it appears that anyone--a baby-sitter perhaps--could take a sample of the baby’s cells, mail in the sample and claim to be the baby’s mother.

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Barbara Marsh covers health care for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7762 and at barbara.marsh@latimes.com