# Opening Pandora's Box



## syhoybenden (Feb 21, 2013)

Who would have thought that those cute Check your Ancestral DNA tests that some families actually gift each other for Christmas would be stirring up so much excrement?

https://www.bloombergquint.com/onwe...tomer-service-reps-into-therapists#gs.DqmgYig


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## PigglyWiggly (May 1, 2018)

I like that some crimes are being solved using these as well as some innocent people being freed.


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## oldshirt (Apr 1, 2017)

Well, we are always saying to paternity test the kids when adultery is suspected. Getting one of these kits over the holidays would be the perfect pretense for doing it. 

The look on a suspected WW's face and the lengths she goes to to keep from testing the kids when she unwraps that box may tell you all you need to know right there.


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## Mr.Married (Feb 21, 2018)

We all did it last year....it was fun to look at all the results. Turns out she was Irish....never saw that one coming.


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## happyhusband0005 (May 4, 2018)

Mr.Married said:


> We all did it last year....it was fun to look at all the results. Turns out she was Irish....never saw that one coming.


My grandfather is a Frenchman through and through. The family originally hails from a small town about an hour west of Paris. He spoke fluent french everything about his life screamed frenchman. He took a DNA test from Ancestry and the results showed him as being nearly 100% Greek. My cousin told me this at my fathers wake, people probably found it really odd that I was standing in the middle of the room dying laughing. Every time I saw him after that I would say Opa!!!


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## Yeswecan (Jul 25, 2014)

Personally I call BS on the entire DNA kits. I know of twins that did the kit. Both had completely different outcomes. Further, with known proof of what country the family has come from, it was of very little percentage from said country. I know of another with a complete family tree from the past 200 years. The entire family hailed from one country. Yet, the DNA kit has every country but the country this individual's family hails from.


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## Rocky Mountain Yeti (Apr 23, 2017)

This stuff has always failed to move the needle of my givea**** meter. 

My lineage, as far as I know it, is completely undistinguished, and equally uninteresting, on both sides. While I have significant respect for my parents, I have little to zero for my granparents, aunts, uncles, etc. It would be positively embarrassing _*if *_I was the type of person who draws self worth from where I came from rather than who I am. Fortunately, I've never been that way.

For an extreme example of how little this means to me I have a little anecdote, completely true. 

At age 14, in my sophomore year in high school, during the genetics block of my biology class, we typed our own blood. We also compared our blood type to our parents'. Upon reviewing the results, my teacher informed me that it would be impossible for the two blood types of my parents to result in a child with my blood type. 

Basically, a high school teacher just told a 14 year old that he was either adopted, switched at birth, or as a minimum his daddy wasn't his daddy. 

Did it rock my world? Not one bit. As far as I was concerned, my parents were my parents pure and simple. They were the ones who raised me, cared for me, nurtured me, taught me valuable life lessons, and prepared me to be a functional adult. Whether or not we shared DNA strands mattered not one whit. I had no existential crisis. I had zero compulsion to find out who my parents really were, etc. Facts is facts, and you do the best you can with them, simple as that. 

As an interesting epilog, the topic came up at my annual physical and my physician, who was far more knowledgeable than my biology teacher explained that it was a rare outcome, but that it was indeed possible for me to be the child of my parents... and he had a solid reference to back it up, one that went into far greater detail than a basic high school textbook.

So in the end, no biggie either way. But there was one truly amusing outcome of the whole thing, which was watching my father, a recently retired Marine who's arms were so big my friends called him 'Popeye,' set my little weasel of a high school bio teacher straight.


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## VermiciousKnid (Nov 14, 2017)

There was a heartbreaking story on reddit maybe a month or so ago where a man in his 50's discovered that the oldest two of his three children were not his using one of these new DNA tests. He uncovered that decades ago his wife cheated on him with their neighbor for years. The neighbor is long since dead and I quit following the guy's story so I don't know if there are updates but he was really destroyed.


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## PigglyWiggly (May 1, 2018)

Rocky Mountain Yeti said:


> This stuff has always failed to move the needle of my givea**** meter.
> 
> My lineage, as far as I know it, is completely undistinguished, and equally uninteresting, on both sides. While I have significant respect for my parents, I have little to zero for my granparents, aunts, uncles, etc. It would be positively embarrassing _*if *_I was the type of person who draws self worth from where I came from rather than who I am. Fortunately, I've never been that way.
> 
> ...


how did he set the "weasel " straight?


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## WorkingWife (May 15, 2015)

Mr.Married said:


> We all did it last year....it was fun to look at all the results. Turns out she was Irish....never saw that one coming.


My SIL's mom found out she was NOT Italian when he had a test done. LOL. Being "Italian" was a huge part of her identity. She loved to cook Italian food and talked about her Italian ancestry all the time. She didn't know who her father was but had been told he was Italian. Wrong. 

I asked her son how she's doing as a non Italian and he said "not good." And then we all laughed awkwardly at the thought.


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## Rocky Mountain Yeti (Apr 23, 2017)

PigglyWiggly said:


> how did he set the "weasel " straight?


Nothing fancy, just a very direct and effective threat of physical violence.


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## PigglyWiggly (May 1, 2018)

Rocky Mountain Yeti said:


> Nothing fancy, just a very direct and effective threat of physical violence.


alrighty


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## sokillme (Jun 10, 2016)

syhoybenden said:


> Who would have thought that those cute Check your Ancestral DNA tests that some families actually gift each other for Christmas would be stirring up so much excrement?
> 
> https://www.bloombergquint.com/onwe...tomer-service-reps-into-therapists#gs.DqmgYig


Which finally puts to rest the old fashion sexist idea that women are somehow the fairer sex. Nah everyone sucks.


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## sokillme (Jun 10, 2016)

Some of this is kind of silly though. I assume it would show me as Irish, but I think of myself as much more American because we I am like 4th generation and have never been to Ireland. I am sure the same is true for most of these results. 

So you think of yourself as Italian but you DNA shows Greek, that just means that your great, great grandfather came from Greece and moved to Italy. How many generations do you stop being Greek and start being Italian. And this really doesn't make sense if you come from a new world country, the only way you could have ancestry native to the area is if you are Native American. 

I know for me as and American as soon as you pass the citizen test you are as American as I am.


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## Young at Heart (Jan 6, 2015)

syhoybenden said:


> Who would have thought that those cute Check your Ancestral DNA tests that some families actually gift each other for Christmas would be stirring up so much excrement?
> 
> https://www.bloombergquint.com/onwe...tomer-service-reps-into-therapists#gs.DqmgYig


I read the story and as someone interested in genealogy and DNA testing (I have had my DNA tested by multiple firms) I can understand that the issue of truth versus family oral history.

So, why did I do all that DNA testing? Because my mother was adopted. In pursuing paper records, I got her adoption papers unsealed with a court order after her death to find out her birth mother. That lead me to find out that her birth birth mother's parents. I also know why my biological grandmother gave my mother up for adoption. I have tried to research my maternal birth great grandmother, but reached a paper dead end, so I have taken an MtDNA test and have over 60 0-genetic distance full matches. So I have a bunch of folks who I know I am related to, but just don't know what the common ancestor is. When I have the free, time I will do some mirror trees to figure it out.

I have genealogical records of my mother's adopted family going back over a hundred years. 

People have always had affairs. After the 70's free love movement there were lots of children with questionable parentage. Furthermore, with all of the modern techniques including the use of sperm donors for couples to create children, DNA is a huge modern issue that probably most parents don't have the courage to address to their artificially conceived child.

I don't view DNA testing as Pandora's box. I view it as an opportunity to learn more about a persons biology and may health/longevity genetic information.

The truth may be embarrassing, but it is still worth knowing.


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## Rocky Mountain Yeti (Apr 23, 2017)

Young at Heart said:


> The truth may be embarrassing, but it is still worth knowing.


I think the key thought is that the truth is not embarrassing... at least to the person seeking the info. Whatever their forbears may have done prior to their birth, that has zero reflection on them. The only thing one should find embarrassing is something awful that they, themselves have done. 

Of all the stories of disconcerting outcomes from such things, the only one I can think of that would actually be disconcerting is finding out your own child is not yours. That'd be hard to take. The rest is just background noise of minimal or no consequence.


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