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Exactly. Many people naively thought that it was going to be positive. Build your family tree, get better ancestry information.

Even finding family relations can be fraught with issues like illegitimate children, sperm donors who thought they’d remain anonymous, secret affairs now outed and then there is the other health data aspect...




On CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend Steve Hartman had a piece about a 23andMe-style test let him know his parents weren't his parents and his family tree is actually a shrub that grew on the wrong side of the tracks.

Being Steve, the story was told in an awww, shucks Ron Howard style with a happy ending, but I found it kind of disturbing.


Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro is a recent book that explores these themes.

https://danishapiro.com/books/inheritance/


Some of those are evil secrets. Cheaters ought to be exposed. Living a lie is a terrible way to live.


Yeah, I don't feel at all bad about cheaters being exposed. But, children that result from that cheating... if you grew up thinking that your dad is your dad and then find out from a dna test that he isn't, that can really shake a person. And it's not from anything the child had any control over.




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