Researching family roots is
fascinating to me, through this I have found a few startling facts within my
ancestors and distant relatives.
I had my DNA researched on both
ancestry and 23 and me sites, you can sign up to be notified by others if your
DNA matches theirs … I chose to do this on a limited level. In doing so a woman
once emailed saying she thinks we are related. After researching my personal family
line I could not find any direct connections to her or her family tree other
than the fact that our DNA seemed to match in a few key places.
So I asked this woman more about
her family (growing up) what was her family life like and her parents like …
she said her father was a medical doctor and had passed away a few years prior
to her doing her DNA test … and that she was aliened, from her siblings and she
wanted to research her family line (hey I get that you can choose your friends,
but not your family).
Since there are physicians in my
family as well … I thought … wow it must be in our DNA to be doctors! So I
asked this woman what medical school did her dad go to and when did her parents
marry …
Then I started to learn things
that disturbed me a bit, from this woman … she told her parents struggled while
her father was in med school (many people do during this time of training). So
her father would sell “his sperm” to make ends meet… now this was back in the
1960’s when such things were not common and since her father was in med school
his sperm went for “big money” … ok that creeped me out a bit and I asked her, “didn’t your mother mind her husband was doing
this?” The woman replied not at all …
now I am thinking OMG … there could be dozens of children in the world fathered
by this man …. So I asked this woman, how long did your father do this? She
answered for his entire time in med school … WOW that is 4 years and WOW this
man could literally have hundreds of biological children in the world…
And somehow a member of my family
DNA line along the way had to have received this man’s “sperm donation” that it
is coming up in a DNA test in my family line … and I thought about the moral
implications of all of this and all the men who donate or sell their sperm …
and the children produced … talk about “dead beat dads” these men top the list on
a moral and ethical level … not to mention a on DNA level as to what physical /
health issues a child may encounter in their lives …
so it was shocking for me
to learn that many medical students did this routinely to make money in the
1960’s and 70’s .. How a future doctor would think that was ok is beyond me and
how any wife would think that was ok is totally beyond me …
I thought of this topic for I saw
a local cable network is airing a TV show on this subject matter this coming
October … and hundreds of adult children who were “fathered” this way will be interviewed
… so I thought of my weird connection to this topic … in a random distant relative
…
And I thought about “personal moral
compasses” as to one’s actions in the world and how what is done in darkness
truly affects the world in general and light will eventually be shone on these
deeds.
