Do you prefer comfortable fiction or the facts? DNA testing

[WeJustWantYouToBeHappy]

Inspired by a discussion about DNA testing in Genealogy where some said they would have preferred not to know the whole truth about their genetic background. Do you think secrets should stay buried (YABU) or would you rather know the facts (YANBU)?

I am very much in the facts over fiction group but are we the minority?

not unreasonable, but people are right to choose for themselves

You can get DNA testing done on yourself but you can't demand anyone else gets it done, even if the knowledge would benefit you ie hereditary disease. A sibling may not want to test and may not want your results that doesn't mean you can't get the test yourself but you shouldn't share your findings with them.

Or if you and a sibling where adopted and one wants to find bio parents and the other doesn't you have to respect each others view. If one finds the bio parents but the other sibling didn't want to you can't share about this sibling to bio parents or force that sibling to see pictures names of their bio parents etc etc.

If you are doing ancestry and a family member says they don't want to know about any unexpected finds you don't tell them but they can't tell you you can't research only that they don't want to know the results they can't stop you from knowing

I like your approach a lot, before testing discuss it with people likely to be affected and find out how much they want to know? Very reasonable but cottage cheese IS cheese, what else can it be called?!

If people want to know, and it matters to them, then they can find out. What they can’t do then is expose everyone else to that with no conversation or consent.

If I am to believe my teacher at school, who was a Nun, so wouldn't lie, my forebears are Adam and Eve (you may have heard of them, they were quite famous). So I have no need of a DNA test.

🤣

I have done DNA testing, both autosomal on myself (so the standard Ancestry test) and a Y-DNA on my dad and nothing unexpected came up. Husband also did an Ancestry test and we did discover that his grandfather's dad was not his biological father. His grandfather's mum was 7 months pregnant when she married so this raises more questions than it answers. Did she know? Would she have been posting on MN asking who could be the father if she'd had sex with two separate men within a week? Did he know? I mean, he clearly knew she was heavily pregnant. But that it wasn't his? All these people have been dead for over 40 years so we have no idea.

Interesting! Is it too long ago for the DNA matches to lead to a likely biological gt grandfather for your dad? I identified my previously unknown grandfather surprisingly easily through close cousin matches, I thought it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack but the answers were right there, that’s one generation closer though.

I’m genuinely mystified by the whole Ancestry thing. I couldn’t give less of a fig who my ancestors were. Complete nonentities just like me I expect. And I certainly wouldn’t be interested in any long lost relatives coming out of the woodwork. Unless they were minted, and terminal. No shade on those that like ferreting around in their family tree, I just don’t really get it.

@WeJustWantYouToBeHappy it's a reference to diet advocates suggesting that cottage cheese is a comparable swap for a good cheddar, Stilton or camembert. Of course literally it is a cheese just not the king of cheeses😂

Sort of. It was on DH's family not mine and the first clue something was off was that he had no matches with his surname. But lots of matches of people with an "unrelated" surname which is very particular to an area of the UK which is strongly associated with fishing/seafaring. I did a bit of digging into the families and they all tended to have many children and all the sons went to sea. So we kind of know the story in that DH's gt grandmother was living in an area with a port, she met up with this guy and got pregnant. Narrowing down which of the many people of the right age with the right surname it was would require lots of other testing.

Millions of people are interested in genealogy and family history though.

When younger I was always very much "facts over feeling, logic over emotions". As I've got older I've come to understand that many situations require more nuance than that.

If it isn't essential that you know your genetic history (i.e. you don't need to know for health reasons or before you marry someone) then I don't blame anyone who would rather not know the truth. Life is hard enough without forcing yourself to face potential difficult truths that won't bring any level of benefit to your life and may only bring distress.

I could hardly wait for commercial testing to become available and still find it fascinating all these years later, but I knew nothing about my parents or their heritage and was raised in a different culture a long way from my genetic roots. It’s a very absorbing hobby especially when the paper trail, where there is one (which of course there often isn’t for certain groups) tells a completely different story from the facts.

Sounds like your DH is left with more questions than answers!

It's about impact if you find out your mother's Father is not actually her Father biologically you have to consider the impact of sharing this info. If your grandmother is still alive do you need to know who your mother's father really is. How would it affect your mother and your grandfather if your grandmother is dead but your grandfather is alive does it benefit him or your mum to know that your grandmother either cheated or was a victim of assault what if he knew and was happy to marry and bring child up as his own. The ethics are complex and hard and knowledge can't be put back in a bottle.

It is completely different to finding out same info about 4 x great grandfather in 1810

I agree. Knowing yourself is one thing, but there are a lot of ethical considerations around sharing that knowledge. Needs a lot of thought and discretion.

The health thing is even more complicated I think, you might not know you’re a carrier of something sinister and there’s definitely no right or wrong way. I was surprised to find out I had multiple copies of mutations that can cause a pretty rare disease in an ethnic group I didn’t know I was part of, and one of my children is a carrier but it remains to be seen which if any of my grandchildren are affected. It felt much more affordable to have the extra health testing on 23andme in those days though, now I don’t know if I could justify the expense.

Several members of my family have done DNA tests and the results are fascinating matching with my records but adding to them. People tended to not talk about illegitimate children in the past even although they were raised in the family. I recently found out that my sister's childhood friend was a second cousin. We never knew. I have friends who have had the situation of someone literally knocking on their door and saying I am your half sibling. Genealogists spend time in training on the ethics of all of this. Clients are asked " do you want to know everything ? " before work starts. In my husband's case we have connected with family in the USA which is particularly exciting as they were refugees from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. My Great Great Grandfather is a mystery man other than name and one Census but a recent DNA test has linked to a family in the USA. It's fascinating.

Bluntly: if you don’t want to know, don’t test. Consider the possibilities before you test.

I’m Jewish, so I’m eligible for the BRCA gene test despite no known history of breast cancer. I didn’t go into it lightly. I talked with a cancer counsellor and with my dc before doing the test. Because my result could affect them, as well.

You seem very black and white about this, when it’s not that kind of situation. You may want to know if the man you think is your father is, or whether you’re inherited Huntington’s, and that’s your right, but you need to respect that not everyone else involved feels the same way. For serious issues, you should consider a specialist counsellor to talk things through before testing.

I agree with this- my problem is that when people do this they often take away the right of the person to not know and upend their he other persons life too.

My mum was contacted after her dad died by someone who had been on an ancestry site and thought they were a half sibling, completely tore up my mum and uncle at a difficult time…turns out the had the wrong person anyway. But this person with a need to know where they had come from didn’t have any regard for a grieving family- it was all about their wants and needs.

I think for the purposes of an AIBU thread it was simpler to polarise the options - truth vs fiction but of course you are right, there is an almost infinitely nuanced middle ground and everyone’s circumstances will be individual.