Revealing the secrets of the body: medical tests as legal evidence in personal status disputes in modern Egypt.

The study seeks to answer the following question: In the field of personal status, what kinds of medical tests have been considered reliable and acceptable by Egyptian courts of law, what kinds have been less accepted, and why? The main finding is that, on the one hand, the judges (qădĭs) have welcomed tests that seek to determine age or to discover physical diseases and/or mental disorders. On the other hand, they have been reluctant to introduce tests to determine virginity and pregnancy tests, and even more so to introduce paternity tests that might bring into light manifestations of moral laxity within Egyptian society and jeopardize the future of illegitimate children. In conclusion, the main resistance to the reliance on modern medical evidence has not been the lack of modern knowledge and technologies or opposition to this, but rather traditional moral and social perceptions.