DonorChildren

By my 40s, I was an accomplished CEO, with a specialty in navigating high tech companies out of hot water. I had learned to camouflage my personal issues. A disruptive childhood, the suicide of my father, and combat-induced trauma all had soul-scorching impact. Was I a leader because of them, in spite of them, or was leadership just in my DNA? As I received accolades for breathing new life into a fallen software star, the walls built around my issues began to crumble. My 27 year marriage was in crisis. Just before my 50th birthday, my 75 year old stroke-recovering mother unveiled a blockbuster. Old gates that furiously guarded her deeply buried secret no longer worked.
“Dad’ wasn’t biological. After 5 years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive a child, my mother read an article about a new-fangled Harvard Medical School doctor, a fertility specialist. The couple enlisted his help. The doctor diagnosed my father as sterile and presented two options; adoption or artificial insemination by an anonymous sperm donor. In the fall of 1944, the fertility field was in its relative infancy. Frozen sperm and sperm banks didn’t exist. Society’s mores, political and religious leaders all denounced “unnatural” pregnancy. Newsweek termed a donor “Ghost Father.” Courts declared the women who used donors as adulterers. Time coined “Artificial Bastards” as donor-conceived children’s’ legal status. My leading edge parents broke taboo ground under the deepest cloak of secrecy.
Fifty years later, my stroke-challenged mother provided scant detail. Was it a Boston newspaper article or an ad? Which paper? She even misremembered the doctor’s name. She died after my first decade of unsuccessful search. DNA technology had since leapfrogged to become internet-available. Twelve years after my Mom’s initial revelation, as a 62 year old CEO-turned venture capitalist, I excitedly spit into a 23andme.com vile for a $999 DNA test. Early results profiled my paternal genetics; British Isles, French and Scandinavian. OK, so I wasn’t Northern Italian, but my gene pool appeared disease-free! Whew! Disappointingly, 23andme uncovered no paternal relatives. A decade after my first test, at 71 years old, with encouragement from my family, I took a second DNA test via Ancestry.com. As DNA technology advanced, the price had dropped to $99 Pay dirt! Its advertising-enriched data base revealed what appeared to be a paternal first cousin. HUGE!!! I reached out with the incredible tale of my 1945 conception. What an avalanche that followed!
My new cousin bonded with me to identify both my mother’s rock star fertility doctor AND the DNA donor emboweled mysteriously within in her family tree. At first, she had suspected her rogue maternal Uncle. She dug and dug. The source of my paternal seed wasn’t her rogue uncle after all, but rather the 7th great grandson of a Pilgrim leader with Mayflower roots. And she wasn’t a new cousin. She was, OMG, a new sister; a jaw-dropper! We share 2,035 centiMorgans in 61 DNA segments, which helps explain our uncanny resemblance. She has affectionately nicknamed me, her new brother, “Morgan.”
Within a decade, DNA tests will be kiosk-available at local pharmacies to advance personalized medicine. Technology’s unintended consequences have just begun to challenge social convention.