Tag: social

If you’re curious about your heritage, you can always take one of those trendy DNA tests. Sites like 23andMe and AncestryDNA offer users the opportunity to take a closer look at their genetics, and by all accounts, they’re largely accurate. There’s no easier way to find out if you truly have Scandinavian heritage, or if you’re Irish enough to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day guilt free. 
In 2017 alone, about 12 million Americans purchased genetic genealogy tests. That means around 1 out of every 25 American adults have access to detailed genetic information—and, by all accounts, that number is going up. 
However, there’s a dark side to online genetic tests: They occasionally unearth uncomfortable information. In fact, the major DNA testing sites explicitly warn their users about that possibility.

1. A woman learns that she has more in common with her husband than she’d anticipated.

Liane Kupferberg Carter met her husband Marc during a vacation in Nassau. It was a storybook romance—or, as she described it in a piece for The Cut, “rom-com cute.”
“I was 25; he was two years older,” she wrote. “Initially, he was chasing my roommate. We struck up an intense conversation on the plane home, and by the time we landed at JFK, I had the unbidden thought, ‘I could marry a guy like this.’”
Spoiler alert: She married him. After arriving home, Liane discovered that Marc lived one block away from her Manhattan apartment. Flash forward a few years, and they were planning their lives together. They tied the knot, and everyone lived happily ever after.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSbz-HRgSA_/
Well, sort of. 38 years later, Liane signed up for 23andMe, and one day, she received an email: “You have new DNA relatives.”
The relative in question was her husband, Marc. He was her third cousin.
Before you get all creeped out, it’s important to know that third cousins don’t have a significantly higher risk of birth abnormalities than totally unrelated people. In fact, one Icelandic study showed that third- or fourth-cousin couples tend to be well suited biologically and typically have more kids than other couples.
There’s even some research suggesting that first cousins’ risks are only a few percentage points higher than other couples (and cousin marriage was fairly common throughout history—Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Edgar Allan Poe all married their cousins, and we certainly don’t look at them like they’re rogue Game of Thrones characters). 
https://twitter.com/HistoryInPics/status/1122123643528654848
One of Carter’s children has an epileptic disorder and autism, but there’s no clear link between the couple’s genetic similarity and the boy’s conditions.
While Liane admits that her unexpected genealogical revelation gave her some pause, she never doubted that her husband was the right man for her.
“I don’t need the imprimatur of 23andMe to tell me what I already know with bone-deep certainty: our connection is a decades’ long conversation that continues to nurture and sustain us both,” she wrote.
In other words, she’s, uh, glad she married her cousin. 

2. A woman gets a DNA test for Christmas (and loses her sense of identity).

Linda Ketchum of Glendale, California received an AncestryDNA test from her husband as a Christmas present. Per a report in The New York Post, she wasn’t expecting much; she simply wanted to trace back her heritage.
“My dad was German, and my mother was Scottish-English,” she told the paper. “I thought it’d be fun to learn a little about my genetic ethnicity, to trace how all the pieces came together.”

3. A CNBC anchor receives shocking information (and ends up writing a book).

Journalist Bill Griffeth took a DNA test in 2012, hoping to learn more about his European ancestors. He’d had an ongoing interest in genealogy—he’s on the board of Boston’s New England Historic Genealogical Society—and he had even written a book about his ancestors’ journey to the United States. Griffeth was extremely proud of his family, and when his cousin asked him to participate in genetic testing to get more information about their family origins, he happily agreed.

BostonGlobe: After taking a DNA test, Bill Griffeth's life was changed by "a deep dark family secret" … pic.twitter.com/ITx23Wl39H

— JamesRoy SFHEA #FBPE (@JamesRoy) September 14, 2016

Hey, he’s part of this article, so you probably know where this is going. The test showed that Griffeth had no biological relation to his late father. When he received word via email, he was crushed.
“My body responded before my brain could,” Griffeth wrote in his memoir The Stranger in My Genes. “I experienced a strange sensation of floating, and I could no longer feel the chair I was sitting in or the Blackberry I was holding. My breathing became labored and shallow and I heard a roaring in my ears like ocean waves crashing off in the distance.”
Initially, Griffeth denied the results, insisting that the company that tested his DNA had made some mistake. He actually went on the air on CNBC within hours of receiving the news and acted as though nothing had happened. For months, he refused to accept reality.
Eventually, the truth set in: His mother had had an affair, which she’d hidden from her family for decades. He eventually decided to confront her with the information.

Park Ridge TV Journalist: A DNA Test Changed My Life: PARK RIDGE, N.J. — Bill Griffeth of Park Ridge, co-anchor of… https://t.co/Wn4EBQ2vOA pic.twitter.com/i5dgrbvfqe

— Bergen County News (@BergenCtyNews) February 17, 2017

“There was a time when I said, ‘I don’t want to pursue this any further, I don’t want to trouble Mom with it,’” Griffeth told the Extreme Genes podcast. “But as my brother said, ‘What if you want answers eventually and she’s gone, what are you going to do? And what about your children, they’re going to need answers down the road?’”
“We really needed to know the truth, so I presented her with the DNA evidence, and she took it like a champ. She admitted that she had made a mistake when she was younger, and that was that.”
These days, Griffeth is at peace with his family history. He doesn’t discuss the matter with his mother, but when he decided to write a book about his experience, she gave him her blessing.
https://twitter.com/BillGriffeth/status/1163861832643293185
“We don’t talk about it anymore,” he said. “…She’s of a different generation, a different time.”
Since going public with his story, Griffeth has heard from dozens of people about their own DNA testing mishaps. He says his perspective has gradually changed; he knows if his mother hadn’t made her “mistake,” he wouldn’t be here, and he takes comfort in knowing his situation isn’t unique.
“The only takeaway I can have from this is to be grateful about it,” he said. “…I encourage anybody, if you’re going through this, reach out. It’ll be a difficult first step, but you gotta be able to tell somebody.”
“I just think that DNA testing is going to have a profound impact, not only on biotechnology and medicine—it’s already having an impact there—but I think it’s going to have a profound impact on our social culture.”  

4. A woman gets a doctor-ordered DNA test, with tragic results.

While many people get DNA tests to learn about their hereditary history, some choose to get tested for medical reasons. Certain hereditary conditions have genetic markers that can help doctors diagnose, prevent, and even cure diseases before they become life threatening. In fact, many direct-to-consumer DNA testing services like 23andMe offer specialized tests for these genetic markers—but they warn that people shouldn’t make medical decisions based on their screenings.
Maureen Boesen has a family history of cancer, and she and her two sisters entered a university study to determine whether or not they had a BRCA gene mutation that would raise her risk of developing the disease.
Boesen tested positive.

Hindsight in 20/20! Hopefully this message helps other women from enduring the same.

— Maureen Boesen (@mamabearboesen) February 21, 2019

“It was just devastating because I knew what breast cancer and ovarian cancer can do to a family,” she told KSHB in Kansas City. “The first question out of my mouth was, ‘Is there any chance this could be wrong?’ And the researcher said ‘No.’”
To limit her chances of developing cancer, Boesen underwent a preventive double mastectomy at 23. Years later, she also decided to undergo a complete hysterectomy, but prior to that procedure, doctors performed another test.

Hi! The purpose of this article is to encourage women to be advocates for their health. If it saves the life of one person, it will be worth it. Sharing experiences like this isn’t easy but I’m hopeful it’ll encourage women to be vocal about their health.

— Maureen Boesen (@mamabearboesen) February 21, 2019

“I was at work, and the first thing [the doctor] said was, ‘We need to talk,’” she recalled. “And my heart just sank. And she said, ‘You’re negative!’ and I just started bawling. I was angry. I was regretful. I was happy. I was sad.”
According to the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force’s recommendations for BRCA testing, doctors should screen some women with cancer in their family histories, but false positives occur occasionally. It’s unclear why Boesen’s physicians didn’t re-test her before carrying out her double mastectomy, but her story is a good indication of how genetic tests can be misleading—and why a second opinion is always helpful when making serious medical decisions. 
“I wish what I had been told was, ‘If you don’t trust it, get another test,’” Boesen said. “But that’s not what I was told, and my life could have been so different.”

5. A woman finds out a secret about her family…but decides to do some investigating.

Kristen Brown received a shock when her aunt sent off for a commercial DNA test: According to the results, Brown’s grandfather wasn’t a full-blooded Syrian. That led to a small family scandal.
“If we weren’t who we thought we were, well, then, who were we?” Brown wrote for Gizmodo.

“We were out on a shopping trip when my daughter, Lilly, turned to me,” says Julie, a 32-year-old mother in St. Louis. “She pointed at one of the cars in the parking lot. She said, ‘That car hit me.’”
For Julie, it was an unusual situation; she knew for certain that 4-year-old Lilly hadn’t been hit by any vehicles (that’s the sort of thing a mother would remember).
“I asked her what she meant. She said, ‘Before I lived with you and Daddy, I lived with another Mommy and Daddy.’ My blood ran cold.”

One thing’s for sure: Many children seem to recount past lives.

We couldn’t find exact statistics—it’s not the type of thing you’d find in a Pew Research poll—but we easily found a few parents whose kids told stories like Lilly’s. Their stories are remarkably similar; they’re going about their normal business when suddenly, their kid remarks on a memory.
“When my daughter was around four years old, she told me that she had died and gone up to the stars and the moon,” Jill Howell, a licensed professional counselor, tells HealthyWay. “I am very open to [the concept of reincarnation], so I calmly asked her questions (though I was so excited to hear this).”
Howell began to believe her daughter was recounting real memories when the girl brought up specific details about her “death.”

“She told me that she was in a store and reaching for something on a shelf and she fell,” Howell says. “She stated that her kids were there telling her that she needed to come back, so she did. A few years later, she denied it and said that she made it up, but you can’t make up something that you have never been exposed to.”

Some psychologists wonder whether reincarnation actually exists—and how it’d fit in with current science.

Jim Tucker, MD, is the director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia. He’s studied childhood reincarnation memories for decades, and he’s a respected member of the psychiatric community—in other words, he’s not a New Age guy sitting in a room full of crystals.

Some real-life cases add credence to Tucker’s claims.

Take the case of the teenage boy who seemingly remembered a past life when visiting his parents’ hometown in India (first reported in National Post in 2009; this link to an archive of the original report).

Cases of possible reincarnation tend to have common characteristics.

According to Tucker, reincarnation memories tend to start when a child is about 3 years old. The memories usually leave around age 6 or 7, but occasionally, adults report remembering past lives. In many cases, children remember violent or unusual deaths, but Tucker says that’s not true for all of the cases he’s studied.
Despite his research, Tucker says that reincarnation isn’t part of his personal belief system. He’s open to the possibility, but he’s trying to maintain a scientific perspective. To that end, he believes that quantum physics could explain reincarnation—again, if the phenomenon actually exists.

“Well, if that is the case, then we would not expect an individual consciousness to end when a physical brain dies. And our cases, of course, provide evidence that in fact consciousness does not end and that it continues on. And [in my book], I explore and speculate that if you use that metaphor, what might we say about existence after we die? …So it is an idea that I think is worth exploring.”

Tucker’s approach is ultimately very simple: Keep an open mind to the possibility of reincarnation, and science might be able to eventually prove it exists. Then again, all of the reincarnated memories might simply be coincidence—until someone actually studies the phenomenon with that perspective, we can’t really know. That’s what his team is trying to accomplish.

Obviously, Tucker’s theories are extremely controversial.

Skeptics note that some famous cases of “reincarnated children” can be easily explained.
Take, for example, the case of James Leininger, who garnered headlines at an early age when he vividly remembered a plane crash that took place during World War II. James suffered from vivid nightmares, and when recounting them to his parents, he’d say things like, “Airplane crash on fire, little man can’t get out.”
That prompted his parents to reach out to counselor Carol Bowman, who took the boy seriously. Eventually, Bowman and James’ parents publicized the story, making the case that James was the reincarnation of a World War II pilot named James Huston, Jr.

After all, the boy remembered incredible details; he remembered the word “Natoma,” and Huston was stationed on the U.S.S. Natoma Bay aircraft carrier. The child pointed out Iwo Jima on a map and told his father that “that is where my plane was shot down.” He remembered the names of specific aircraft.
But as skeptic Brian Dunning noted for Skeptoid, James had been fascinated with aircraft and military history before recounting his past life.
“All of the evidence is purely anecdotal, and is practically the gold standard of confirmation bias and observational selection,” Dunning wrote. “The story as the public knows it was written by the parents themselves after nearly a decade of personally trying to confirm and prove their belief. Reading their book, I marveled that the only proof they gave over and over again is that there is no way a three-year-old could have had knowledge of aircraft carriers or known the names of specific fighter planes. That’s an insult to every three-year-old who ever lived.”

So, it seems like your kid is reincarnated. What do you do now?

Let’s say that your kid seems to remember a past life. How can you address their feelings about those memories—false or not—in a healthy manner?   
To some extent, that depends on your personal beliefs. Howell recommends a measured approach.

Kids say the darndest things. They also say the cringe-iest things. They hear everything, they remember, and they repeat. Think about that next time you’re tempted to drop an f-bomb in front of a toddler.
Anyway, when kids veer off-script, it can be humiliating—but it can also be highly entertaining. Parents can spin that embarrassment into comedic gold. All they have to do is tell the story.

“Daddy, why are the police here?”

Social mores are not a toddler’s strong point.
“In a McDonald’s, my son saw two police officers,” wrote thatdan23. “His comment: ‘Daddy, why are the police here? They don’t eat hamburgers, they eat donuts.’”

“We can punch a stranger!”

Where do kids come up with this stuff?
“My oldest daughter and I used to run away from my wife when we went shopping,” wrote openletter8. “One time, we got particularly far away, and I asked her what do you wanna do now that Mom can’t stop us?”

“I want that f***in’ truck.”

Remember, kids are little sponges. If you use profanity around them, they will pick that language up. Then they will deploy it in the most awkward situations they can find.
“My friend’s [2-year-old] daughter saw another kid in the grocery store with a toy truck, and out of nowhere says, “I want that f***in’ truck…” in an angry tone,” wrote thebroklahoman.

“I did not stick around to see the reaction of the cashier.”

Kids don’t know the stakes. You can’t just assume they’ll know what will embarrass their parents, or, worse, get them arrested.
“When babysitting my young cousin, she ran through the store yelling, ‘You’re not my daddy!’ as I chased her telling her to stop running,” wrote I_am_number_one. “Target security didn’t like that too much. It embarrasses her now that she’s older because I like to remind her about it constantly.”
Stores are dangerous for people with kids. Inevitably, our little angels will come up with something that makes you look like a bad parent, or worse.

“Is that my daddy?”

From the mouths of babes…whatever that’s supposed to mean.
“My 4-year-old nephew [screamed] at my brother, ‘Dad, stop acting like a child!’ at some big family event,” wrote aminice. “It was absolutely clear to everyone present he picked it up from the mother scolding my brother in private. He really had a point, though.”
Kids don’t always clarify their meaning. They just say what they’re thinking.
“My son came home from kindergarten with his backpack full of canned food,” wrote twillsteele. “When pressed about the issue, he confidently stated that he had told the teacher he was hungry, and we didn’t have any food at home!”

“Santa isn’t real.”

Things get really tricky when family beliefs butt heads with the broader culture.
“My son is full of embarrassing stories,” wrote killjennyproductions. “We told him about Santa not being real because he was terrified of Santa and cried night after night, screaming that ‘the evil Santa pirate was going to come into his house and mess with his things.’”
“Being 4, he didn’t understand our warnings not to tell other children. At Chick-fil-A one day, a kid comes running out of the play area, crying that some kid was telling them that Santa wasn’t real.”
“I rush in, aiming for damage control, and hear my boy finishing his lecture: ‘Santa isn’t real, and Jesus isn’t real. I am Jesus!’”

“She’s a witch!”

You can tell this next one is going to go wrong from the very start.
“When my kid was a toddler, and just learning how to tell men from women, he liked yell out his verdict,” wrote DevonianAge. “One day, we were in a cafe, and he decided to practice.”
“’Mama, you’re a woman,’ he said.”
“‘That’s right, honey.’”
“‘And Papa is a man!’”

“We don’t pick our nose, man.”

Kids see everything. Then they make comments.
“I have a 2-and-a-half-year-old, and so this just happened the other day,” wrote diciteco. “At a baseball game, I’m carrying my daughter so that her head is resting on my shoulder.”
“Suddenly she pokes her head up, looks directly at the man behind me, and says: ‘We don’t pick our nose, man. I said, we don’t pick our nose. No thank you!’”
“I didn’t turn around, instead saying that we only say that to people in our family … My daughter is very outgoing … [I’m] looking forward to plenty more embarrassing moments with complete strangers.”

“I was the best pooper at Disney World that day.”

Here’s one that speaks for itself. We certainly don’t want to speak for it.
“[I] took my 3-year-old to Disney World,” wrote Explodo86. “Of course, after about an hour in the park, both I and the offspring have to go to the bathroom. We head off to one of the main bathrooms right next to the castle.”