The Lie That Made Me

https://torontolife.com/memoir/the-horrifying-truth-about-my-biological-father/

by dadt • 4 years ago

124 86 4 years ago

tomrod• 4 years ago

23andMe and similar services, though creepy to a degree to have your genetic information linked and profiled, have spawned a minor industry of social and familial alignment. Half-siblings and half-aunts/uncles are being found to be more common than people realized.

The convergence of technology and society is fascinating. This was an interested read on the mispractice of a fertility doctor.

anonporridge8• 4 years ago

I'm honestly a little worried about the social fracturing that could happen as genetic and paternity testing get increasingly cheap and ubiquitous.

My intuition is that infidelity and paternity fraud is wildly more common than anyone wants to believe, and old social orders will break down as it becomes impossible to ignore and trivial for even light suspicions to be validated.

I have to believe it's good in the long run, because I think any order built on the foundation of deception is inherently fragile and ultimately doomed. There's a stronger order on the other side, but potential chaos through the transition.

kryptiskt• 4 years ago

There was a study that showed that cuckoldry was pretty rare, the rate was around 1-2%[0]:

"Reading the internet, or even perusing the scientific literature, you'd get the idea that people are constantly cheating on their spouses. Indeed, scientists have estimated that anywhere from 10-30 percent of men are unknowingly raising children who are not their own. This situation is referred to as cuckoldry, or scientifically as "extra-pair paternity." Now, however, it appears that our estimates of cuckoldry rates were way off.

A new survey published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution sums up a number of recent studies that show the actual rate of cuckolds in the general population, based on genetic testing and ancestor research, is 1-2 percent. This challenges evolutionary psychologists who have suggested that human women "routinely ‘shop around’ for good genes by engaging in extra-pair copulation to obtain genetic benefits." This idea came in part from studying socially monogamous songbirds, which mate for life but have roughly 1 in 10 babies as a result of "extra pair" matings."

[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/cuckoldry-is-incredi...

invalidOrTaken• 4 years ago

Better to rip off the bandaid, honestly. Rather than old social orders breaking down, I think we'll see some of them strengthened, as the reasons for their institution in the first place get harder to ignore.

madrox5• 4 years ago

"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" and all that.

Any time there's discussions of this kind, though, it feels like a slippery slope to Gattaca. If you think about it, in many ways the urge for your genes to be the ones that make it are one of the only things holding us back from a genetically engineered society and genetic discrimination.

AlwaysRock• 4 years ago

If it is truly commoner than most think, wouldnt acceptance of it become common eventually?

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

The Neandertal genes in me explain a lot. The Orangutan genes, however, are a puzzler.

einpoklum• 4 years ago

While that doctor's behavior was indeed utterly unacceptable, I'm not sure I understand the insistence on figuring out which sperm donation got you pregnant (if you're the mother) or who exactly your biological father is.

A hundred men donate sperm at some clinic, and then went on with their lives. If it were me, I doubt I would want to pick out one of them and try to pull them into my life. He hasn't done something significant distinguishing him from all the rest which merits this. At least - that's how I feel about it.

And after all, Penina (the mother) herself...

worried such an arrangement [donation from a friend-of-a-friend] would be emotionally and legally fraught, especially if the man wished to be involved in the baby’s life.

madrox5• 4 years ago

If you're a certain kind of person who is either lonely or lost in life, it's a mission with a purpose whose reward may be a connection that makes you feel less alone. Readinging between the lines of this article, it sounds like this author may be a bit of both.

stickfigure2• 4 years ago

Agreed, it seems odd to have a strong emotional reaction to the discovery that your father is Donor #3855 instead of Donor #2291.

On the other hand, inheriting celiac is pretty awful.

samtho6• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I understand the insistence on figuring out [...] who exactly your biological father is.

The importance of this is different for everyone in this situation and weighs on everyone different. When if you looked into a mirror and did not know or understand where literally half of you came from? Would you know what some sort of answer? If you grew up not fitting in with your family, it is only natural to want to know more lest you repress it and experience an identity crisis.

marc_abonce• 4 years ago

Psychological reasons aside, because this information can be medically relevant.

For example the article mentions:

Rebecca had also recently developed celiac disease, a hereditary condition that didn’t run in either of her parents’ families.

madrox5• 4 years ago

This is so incredibly sad. At this point in my life, I empathize with the involuntary donor quite a bit. While the author might not understand his position not wanting her to have any contact with him or his family, I certainly do.

It's clear this doctor has a pattern of deceptive behavior beyond merely his practice. It's also clear that if one doctor does it, someone else has or will. I wonder how the medical board can better filter out chronic deceivers or at least better regulate it.

stickfigure2• 4 years ago

Can you explain that in more detail? Because I don't understand it at all.

If somehow it turned out I have other children, I'd love to know how they're doing and if they're similar to me or my kid. A personal data point on the nature vs nurture debate!

I can understand not wanting additional financial responsibilities - but that can't be the worry here, the author is in her 30s.

darkerside2• 4 years ago

Some people don't want to accept that the story of their life is not what they think it is

dixie_land• 4 years ago

If a rape victim has an offspring and wants nothing to with it, I’d say it’s a very understandable position.

madrox5• 4 years ago

I think people with families can be incredibly protective of it and anything that may create emotional upheaval in it. If I were in his situation, I'd be thinking more about how this might impact my wife or children. Depending on upbringing and religion, I can see it being immensely traumatic for the rest of the family. I'd care more about protecting that stability than satisfying my or my donor child's curiosity. You can say that family would be wrong, but sometimes being right isn't the most important thing in a marriage or in parenting.

Imagine this story if it didn't happen through artificial insemination but through, say, an ex-girlfriend who didn't reveal the pregnancy until the child was in adulthood. That literally happened to a friend of mine. While the father had no control over what happened, it was immensely disruptive to his family. To them, it was a lot like discovering he had a second family...cue the thoughts on if you'll be loved less, etc. While you can say there's a world of difference between the two, the emotional journey for the family can end up looking very similar. Again, it isn't fair, but anything emotionally charged like this isn't.

I'm not saying it's necessarily what I'd do, but I understand.

_carbyau_• 4 years ago

Depending on scope and location, there could still be the issue of inheritance.

morgante3• 4 years ago

Yeah, I completely sympathize with the donor. He didn't want this child and should not be forced to add another family member because the author (selfishly) wants contact with her father.

The author is also clearly in denial. If she "didn’t care about finding [her] biological father" she wouldn't have put tremendous effort into it (including writing this article).

samtho6• 4 years ago

I’m assuming you had the privilege of knowing your biological family, in which case it can be difficult to fully understand one’s motivation behind attempting to locate them.

“Anonymous” sperm and egg donors that are able to be found and contacted at least they knew they what they were signing up for in that 3rd parties would be using their gametes to have their own children. In this case, someone who had banked sperm for their use in the future only had it instead used in this situation.

This article brings attention to the dismal state of the fertility industry that has no professional accountability despite providing services to create new life. It is rather insensitive to trivialize what this person is feeling by calling her selfish for wanting to know who her father is as if it’s some luxury and lacking in empathy to dismiss these feelings by simply stating she is in denial. In addition to the trauma caused by learning that she was donor conceived, learning that clinic royally fucked up has robbed her of the opportunity to establish contact with her biological family due to the situation the clinic put her in.

MarkusWandel• 4 years ago

I'm not even remotely in the author's situation, but who hasn't sometimes resented some aspect of how they came to be? To which my own response is always "but that's what produced me! If anything had gone differently in even the minutest way (like which of those wiggly things wins the race) I wouldn't be here! Someone else would be. Case closed.

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

I know the odds that I exist are incredibly remote, and so am happy it happened and I'm alive.

tomcam• 4 years ago

So are many of us C, C++, and D programmers ;)

colinchartier• 4 years ago

The odds that you would exist to perceive yourself existing, however, are 100%.

samtho6• 4 years ago

From personal experience, it’s rare that someone in this position resents how they came to be but rather how parental figures in their lives handle this information, purposefully withholding it from the party that had no say in the matter yet means the most to.

fortran77• 4 years ago

Of course, if the doctor didn't do this, she wouldn't be here and someone else would have been. Does this woman not want to exist?

samtho6• 4 years ago

This is just a red herring argument. It is possible to be grateful to exist but resentful to how it came to happen.

primordialsoup• 4 years ago

Somewhat orthogonal comment. Was reading this book "The coming storm" where the author Michael Lewis talks about chaos theory, and how you could go back to one (small) thing that is at the root of who you are. For example, DJ Patil had dyslexia, and that made him not do well in the school, and so he ended up going the off-beaten track and hacking his school systems etc. Years later, he was hacking into US Weather service's data, and many more incidents later, he became "Head of Data Products and Chief Scientist of LinkedIn" and later worked for Obama.

Parallel here is that one guy's mischievous behavior has such a massive consequence.

pram• 4 years ago

In 2020 I found out (through 23andme) that I had a half brother and another biological father. It was an extremely surreal experience. I can understand where the author is coming from for sure.

It did give me a completely different perspective on things. My bio-dad apparently had an awful life as an alcoholic, deep in constant poverty. He had a troubled relationship with my half-siblings and in general it sounds like I missed a bullet lol

It made me appreciate my father a lot more. We had a lot of issues, and he was pretty neglectful… but it could have been much worse! I’m much nicer to him these days ;P

samtho6• 4 years ago

Through at-home DNA testing, I found out at the age of 29 that I was donor conceived. It was shocking to see my DNA relatives list be populated with 12 people to whom I shared about 25% of my DNA with that I had no idea existed just minutes before. It has been a roller coaster ever since with new half siblings popping up frequently and essentially having to onboard them to the family.

My biological father was open to any sort of relationship his donor offspring wanted, having no kids of his own. His parents and extended family also welcomed us very warmly. Unfortunately he actually passed away due to a freak accident before I even spat in the tube, robbing me of any opportunity to meet him. In a way however, I was very lucky. A non trivial number of people reaching out to their newly found bio parent are met with being ignored, blocked, or even cease and desist letters. It makes me legitimately sad for those who have a living bio parent but this person has no interest in any sort of relationship or even trivial contact. Knowing they are out there for the time but the day will come that they will no longer be.

It has been an isolating experience. The parents that donor kids grow up with were often told to never tell their kid, and even when/if their kid finds out, they typically attempt to keep them from telling anyone else. Then to be rejected by someone to whom you share half your DNA with, the half that has become a blank line on the medical questionnaire of your family’s medical history or just the simple question of why you don’t look much like the rest of your family, is just adding insult to physiological injury. The fertility industry peddled lies about anonymity despite knowing exactly how DNA works, that the offspring created will exist with half of the donors DNA in literally every cell of their body. I do not have a lot of sympathy for donors who were unpleasantly surprised that the consequence of donating gametes resulted in offspring and that eventually technology would enable deanonymization.

I’ve personally found a lot of comfort in my brothers and sisters that share the same donor as we are in the same boat. We are all eerily identical in our mannerisms, humor, values, and even choice in partner. But along with this comfort also exists lingering sadness that these people you just recently met, have come to really consider family, and genuinely become fond of, will never have shared growing up together and all the experiences this comes with. There is a podcast called “You look like me” that explores the experiences of Donor Conceived people, that has an episode titled “Memories missed” which very succinctly describes this sadness in those two words. In addition, forging and maintaining relationships as an adult is hard and it takes a lot of work to stay close. To top it all off, the fact that your original family expect you to stay quiet about literally half of yourself, leaves this comfort very bittersweet. It has been a few years since I found out and it really has changed my life and relationship with my parents forever. I have thought about this every day since, and it weighs on me more and more each day.

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

At one of the military bases my dad was stationed at, he told me about a local woman who was going about this the old fashioned way. She was dark haired, and had 6 blonde boys. Every year when there was a new crew at the base, she'd show up at the local watering hole and scout out the tallest, blondest, smartest serviceman she could find, and you can guess the rest.

She never wanted anything else from those men, and her expenses were covered by welfare which paid for the kids.

bluehorseray• 4 years ago

To be fair that selection process is close enough to how it works for everyone in the world, minus not wanting anything to do with them hah

ChuckNorris893• 4 years ago

To be fair that selection process is close enough to how it works for everyone in the world

As a short and not very attractive male, tell me about it :)

In truth, before modern civilization, only one single male reproduced for every 17 females. That's some inequality, which I think is on par with how the market looks like on Tinder for some guys.

qiskit3• 4 years ago

Every year when there was a new crew at the base, she'd show up at the local watering hole and scout out the tallest, blondest, smartest serviceman she could find, and you can guess the rest.

Did she give them an IQ test before inviting them to her place? How did she determine which one was the smartest? This reminds me of an article I read a while back about chinese women who were desperate to use US/EU sperm banks. But that may have been to use their children to get US/EU citizenship than raising blonde children.

She never wanted anything else from those men, and her expenses were covered by welfare which paid for the kids.

That was decent of her. She could have sued these men for child support and possible ruined families and these men's lives. Not sure she was very nice to her fatherless children or to the taxpayers though.

ChuckNorris893• 4 years ago

How did she determine which one was the smartest?

Same how the Roman army did it when drafting. Having lively eyes and a witty sense of humor/banter, meant you were in the intelligent camp. Humans have had an evolutionary ability to quickly detect stupidity/intelligence in an individual. You can tell women are especially good at quickly probing/sensing this after a short conversation, if you've been dating a bit, which is why some men have gotten good at faking or compensating for it to up their odds (overconfidence, machoism, etc.).

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

How did she determine which one was the smartest?

Beats me. But here's the Ann Landers test for intelligence based on having a conversation with the person:

1. smart people talk about ideas

2. average people talk about events

3. below average people gossip about other people

I know, I know, it's not perfect, but it's not a bad proxy. Yes, I indulge in gossip myself. No, I deliberately did not say "all" people for a reason.

Not sure she was very nice to her fatherless children

I have no idea if she was a good mother or not, but it's unfair to presume she wasn't.

or to the taxpayers

Of course people take advantage of welfare.

fineIllregister• 4 years ago

She could have sued these men for child support and possible ruined families and these men's lives.

If the men had families, then they the men would be the ones ruining their lives. Seems like they escaped accountability for infidelity and left the costs to the tax payers.

aklemm• 4 years ago

Apocryphal and dubious. Likely a myth to prop up the collective confidence in being breeding stock.

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

I have no proof, other than my dad wasn't known for telling tall tales. He related the story because it was both unusual and amusing.

You can believe whatever you like.

strikelaserclaw• 4 years ago

was this army base located in Germany?

UberFly• 4 years ago

What a sobering and fascinating read. Being led to things like this is why I come to HN every day.

DantesKite• 4 years ago

What's crazy to me is that he was never charged with a crime, just a fee.

Should probably make it illegal.

The Lie That Made Me

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