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Woman Takes DNA Test, Learns Her Real Dad Is Her Mom’s Doctor

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 05 2018, @11:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-not-like-you-thought dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

There are many reasons to avoid the plethora of direct-to-consumer DNA tests on the market these days. Recent data suggests that many may produce alarming false positives for disease risks, while others that claim to predict things like athletic abilities and wine preferences are simply dubious. Another, perhaps less-common concern is that an at-home genetic analysis may unveil completely unexpected, deeply disturbing information that you just can’t prepare for.

That was the case for Washington state’s Kelli Rowlette (née Fowler), who took a DNA test with the popular site Ancestry.com back in July 2017.

Rowlette was likely expecting to discover new details about her distant ancestors, but she instead learned that her DNA sample matched that of a doctor in Idaho. The Ancestry.com analysis predicted a “parent-child” relationship. Befuddled and in disbelief, Rowlette relayed the findings to her parents, Sally Ashby and Howard Fowler. According to a lawsuit the family filed in the US District Court of Idaho, she told her parents she was disappointed that the results were so unreliable.

But little did she know that her parents—who previously lived in Idaho—had trouble conceiving her and, in 1980, underwent an unusual fertility procedure with a doctor near their Idaho Falls home. The name of that doctor was Gerald E. Mortimer—who happened to have a DNA sample with Ancestry.com that matched Rowlette’s.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @06:02PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @06:02PM (#663495)

    I suspect there was a lot of ego wrapped up in fatherhood

    Why do you assume it is an ego issue? How do you even bring that topic up?

  • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday April 06 2018, @06:52PM

    by JNCF (4317) on Friday April 06 2018, @06:52PM (#663516) Journal

    I can't cite you any studies linking ego to fatherhood, it's just something I've anecdotally noticed in men. I actually hesitated to bring it up, but I was trying to be recognise the sensitivity of situation that the parents are in given that I was being critical of their decision to lie to their grown child about her biological ancestry. Another obvious factor is that the knowledge could somehow damage her emotional bond to the legal father, but if I was in that guy's shoes I'd be questioning to what degree this factor was a rationalization for the ego thing (which you probably still disagree with as even being a factor, and I haven't made a strong argument for).