Adoptee DNA Testing: The Pandora's Box of DNA

When Ancestry rolled out it's latest onslaught - the affordable auotsomal tests - into the genealogy markets, a by-product of the tests became their use by adoptees to learn something about their genetic backgrounds.

This is because not only have the big four test providers (Ancestry, My Heritage, 23 and Me and Family Tree DNA) provided users with an idea of their genetic make up - where your ancestors might have come from - but they also provide, in varying degrees matches to people who have DNA tests that matches bits and parts of your DNA.

And this is where things are becoming sticky, and people are wondering what do I do?

In our house, we used DNA testing on ourselves as something that we thought it would open doors with test.  It was of special interest to my husband, because his mother was adopted out of New York State, where adoption records are locked down tighter than Hetty Green's purse.   While we have been able to identify and confirm my mother in laws birth parents, by using both non-identifying information provided to her in the 1980's, and DNA testing, her birth parents descendants harshly rejected us by telling us not only do they not believe us, but even if it were true, they never want to hear from us again.  That hurt.

The problem is, every time my husband opens up his DNA Match page, there is his mother's niece/nephew test confirming that they have a relationship, and they are cousins.  They may wish to bury their head in the sand, but the results are there for them to see.  The onus is on them.

Our feelings are that despite how they treated us, our door is always open.

Because adoption laws drafted eons of years ago could not foresee the discovery of DNA, the mapping of DNA, and then the development of DNA testing for an avocational purpose, there is a very real conflict between the law and the curiosity of the human mind.

It has created a Pandora's Box dilemma for adoptees.  Do you keep the box closed?  Do you open it?

Human's, since the dawn of time have philosophically pondered the question "where do I come from?"  Man and womankind figured out the mechanics of how a baby is made, born, lives and then dies.

But what we haven't debated are the philosophical questions that arise from a legally valid closed adoption and the use of DNA testing by the adoptee and the possible outcomes.

Consider these points:

1) Does the use of the test give the adoptee a moral path to finding their birth parents?
2) What happens when an adoptee is contacted by the children of the birth parents?
3) If a birth parent has buried the memories down so deep, does the adoptee have a right to press the issue?
4) At what point does an adoptee stop trying to reach out to birth parents and their families?
5) If contacted, does the birth parents have any obligation to the birth child to answer questions?
6) Would working through an intermediary - a disinterested third party - be of help?
7) Are their professionally trained counselors in this field?
8) Who's right and who is wrong?

In Facebook groups, there are adoptees who have made breakthroughs.  There are adoptees who haven't.  There are supportive users offering suggestions on how to follow through, how to cope with the outcome.  There are also group users who are insist that the rights of the adoptee to know the truth outweigh the rights of the birth parents.

My fear is that this isn't being looked at enough from either side to determine if what are the possible outcomes, who can provide counseling to either side, how to support these people.  There is also very real and moral question and even I am not able to word it properly.  Who controls the birth right and the right to know.  It used to be the adoption document and state laws.  Now those legal proceedings can be easily circumvented.

There are going to be people who have to make the decision on whether to open there genetic Pandora's Box, or not.  Human curiosity being what it is, it is decision that should be weighed by people who are adopted, and now by people who have thought it is all behind them, now.