[CMartin1981]

Your best bet is DNA testing with as many of the big DNA companies as you can afford / are comfortable with. I was conceived the same way and deduced the identity of my biological father from a second cousin match on 23andMe.

[CMartin1981]

Hi! I tested with all the sites (23andMe, Ancestry, FTDNA) simply because I am hoping to run across half-siblings. As for medical information, I used Promethease, which cost me $5 and gave a general — albeit messy — synopsis of a lot of genetic tendencies toward cancer, mental illness, etc. You upload your raw genome from your DNA test (from 23andMe, Ancestry, or FTDNA) and it uses that. If you would still need to do a DNA test to get to that point, I personally would use 23andMe since they do have some health information and keep adding more. If you want to stay hidden from paternal relatives, you could use a username that isn’t your actual name, or you could even opt out of the “DNA relatives” database altogether. I considered Promethease well worth the money.

I also used the SNPedia and OpenSNP websites to look up things I was curious about, such as the BRCA gene for breast cancer risk, and then compared the SNPs listed against my raw data from 23andMe and the others. It’s labor intensive — the BRCA gene(s) for instance includes at least 20 SNPs, about 17 of which were actually included in my genome from the DNA tests since they don’t map every last SNP, so getting a good idea of my risk from BRCA took at least half an hour — but I wanted to check out some risks I suspected I might have inherited and the ones that seemed confusing on my Promethease report.

I’ve also done formal genetic counseling after my biological father gave me a heads up about a particular gene mutation in his family that leads to a dramatically increased cancer risk. This was what led me to start looking things up on OpenSNP and my raw data, but the gene in question wasn’t included in my raw data. Having counseling and one gene screened cost me a couple hundred bucks (USA) and was only covered by insurance because I had a known close family member with a potentially dangerous mutation on that gene. I mention this because sometimes people suggest genetic counseling being better than a family medical history, and my experience indicated it wouldn’t yield much and might be prohibitively expensive for a DC person whose family medical history is at least half unknown since — in my experience — genetic medical testing at present only really tests for known risks, not unknown ones. I think this will eventually change, but for now, it seems to be the case.

[CMartin1981]

Hello, Prof. Hanson. I was conceived at KU and would be happy to answer your questions.

1) Yes, I have had contact, only by letter. I introduced myself in a letter and he answered my questions, by letter, and asked me never to contact him again. I don’t have an adjective for that sort of relationship except perhaps “non-existent.”

2) I refer to him as my “biological father” or, in instances where more clarification is necessary, my “sperm donor father.” I have only ever addressed him by his full name.

3) I grew up in a heterosexual two-parent household with my mother and dad. I refer to my social father as my “dad.”

[Author]

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