Lifestyle The test results were presented in a colourful pie chart that clearly depicted my genetic blueprint, a calculation entirely determined by the DNA analysis of my submitted saliva. I absorbed the results in milliseconds: 47 per cent British, 44 per cent Irish and insignificant traces of Norwegian and Germanic Europe. I was dumbfounded and confused. My genetic analysis showed no French. Not even a trace. With half of my genes inherited from my French heritage father, there had to be French in my DNA. This was scientifically indisputable. At first, I tried to convince myself that somebody had made a terrible mistake, however, an urgent call to Ancestry reinforced the fact that my father’s genetic composition would indeed need to show up in my DNA. There was no mistake. As I continued staring at the pie chart, I was forced to acknowledge the truth: my Dad was not my biological father. Far less important to me was the fact that my genetic makeup contained neither a Dutch nor an aboriginal link. The Netherlanders were not my people and I clearly had no genetic connection to Canada’s First Nations Indians. The absence of French, however, was the heartbreaking revelation. Nothing else depicted in the pie chart mattered to me. I retreated to a darkened room in my home and wept. In the following weeks and months, I learned that there is a growing litany of others whose experiences were not unlike my own. In one way or another, each of our life-altering events is connected to the latter-day emergence of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing, a science that has been met with tremendous popularity with millions of people worldwide providing a saliva sample to leading test companies such as Ancestry.ca and 23andMe. Now, with easily accessible DNA testing of a person’s genetic code – one shared “by degrees” with his/her relatives – family secrets and other hidden truths are completely vulnerable like never before. Not only are they vulnerable, they are being exposed. Although the wording on testing company websites varies, customers are warned that their DNA could reveal surprising, identity-disrupting facts such as discovering an unknown genetic parent or sibling. While there is no accurate count of people whose lives have been upended by unexpected test results, there is no shortage of stories in which families have been torn apart by the exposure of a long-concealed family secret. My own situation turned out as well as can be expected, given that I had lived for decades before discovering that I was not the person whom I had always thought I was. My parents had already passed away and the biological father whose identity I managed to discover was likewise gone. I was nevertheless able to piece together the history behind the wall of silence. What had happened was not an uncommon story during the 1940s and ‘50s, when a woman who became pregnant out of wedlock brought shame on both herself and her family, whereas today nobody would bat an eyelash at sex before marriage. For reasons unknown, my biological father was unprepared to wed, leaving my mother abandoned with child. However, a friend who had secretly loved my mother stepped up and married her, despite the circumstances. This good gentleman became my Dad even before I was born. He’s the only real and true father I ever knew. The man who never wanted me to know that I was not his biological daughter. The man who taught me to fish and to drive a car. The man who bought me my first prom gown. The person who walked me down the aisle when I married. A father whose love and loyalty prevailed from the very beginning to his very end. EPILOGUE During the two years since my DNA test exposed the hidden truth of my background, my thinking has become cemented on the principle that genes alone do not entirely represent the essence of who we are. Certainly, in my case, I believe that the household environment in which I was raised significantly shaped the person I would become. For decades, I knew who I was and then suddenly I didn’t. I confess that the rewriting of my genetic identity was emotionally devastating and a hard pill to swallow that took months to get down. In retrospect, do I wish that I had never taken the DNA test?The answer to that is a double-edged sword. I cannot say that I’m glad I did it yet, on the other hand, the test led me to seek out any hereditary health issues which my biological father may have passed on to me. Fortunately, there were none. Based on my own experience, would I caution people against DNA testing? Certainly not. While my own DNA test definitely got me more than I bargained for, this is not to say that my outcome represents the norm…or even a high percentage. Certainly, I cannot blame the messenger – a science whose value goes far beyond recreational DTC genetic testing into areas such as criminal justice, hereditary diseases, paternity testing, archeological genetic coding, prenatal health tests and more. CSANews | SUMMER 2019 | 37
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