August 2, 2024

"My son has all but cut connections with me.... A year or so ago when I was visiting, I had a DNA test swab with me..."

"... and asked [my granddaughter] to supply the saliva. The good news is, it turns out she is indeed my granddaughter, although unlike all the other grandkids, she looks nothing like any of the families on my side. She looks like a clone of her mother and a lot like her half brother from a different father. The results of this test leaked out via another family member, and there was a lot of anger by the mother that I doubted her faithfulness. I did apologize, although I really wanted to know the results. My apology was not accepted as good enough...."

From "Carolyn Hax: She doubted her grandkid’s paternity. So she picked up a DNA test. A letter writer insists on the truth of a grandchild’s paternity, and wonders if it must come at a cost with the child’s family" (WaPo).

That goes into The Annals of Unaccepted Apologies.

I wonder:

1. How often does it happen that someone secretly acquires a DNA sample from another person and gets it tested? It's always wrong, so there would not usually be confessions.

2. What tempted the grandmother to give in, not only to her unseemly curiosity, but to telling someone else what she did? Did she not realize how wrong she was? Did this other person participate in gossip about the child's paternity, motivating the grandmother to whip out her proof?

3. How often has it happened, across the great span of human existence, that family members have gazed upon the face of an innocent child and formed ideas about who, really, is the father? What evils, great and small, have they committed in the name of their suspicions?

86 comments:

Iman said...

They blinded her with Science.

Jamie said...

Yikes. At least she's not surprised by her son's reaction.

Wince said...

She Poviched the bastard without her parents' consent. [Brawl ensues.]

Todd said...

So apparently the actual parents did not care but she did and took matters into her own hands, strike one. She then blabbed about it to others, strike two & three.

Not sure how the child's mother can move past this, it is a HUGE slight...

Also, what is it with people NOT being able to keep their mouths shut?!? The only secrets that are kept are yours that you tell NO ONE!

Mr Wibble said...

He is, however, always happy to ask for and accept extra money.

So tell him 'no.' He's a grown man and a father, and he can provide for his own family without going to mommy for cash, especially if he's going to not forgive you.

Just some rando on the interwebz said...

Last year the was a scandal about a Canadian lab that was screwing up DNA paternity tests. One poor sap ended up changing the tattoo of his son's name from Travis to travesty except, ooops, the results were wrong and Travis was his son.

Ann Althouse said...

One sense this woman has committed other offenses.

How hard would it have been for the woman to convince the son and daughter-in-law that she was working on the families genealogy and had found it really interesting, and let's all do it, I'll pay, etc. etc.?

Ann Althouse said...

"How hard would it have been for the woman to convince the son and daughter-in-law that she was working on the families genealogy and had found it really interesting, and let's all do it, I'll pay, etc. etc.?"

Just waft the idea and watch the daughter-in-law's face and listen to her response. Then you'll have your answer... if you can read it right.

doctrev said...

What did she think was going to happen?! I doubt her son is doing so badly he needs to tolerate this, especially with his wife being understandably upset.

rhhardin said...

I'd check Webb Hubbell and Chelsea Clinton.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It's a new fishbowl world with DNA. My father died at 75 thinking he was an only child, but it turns out he had a half brother older than him, who then had descendants. His mother died in 1952. My nephew/adopted son had a mother given up for adoption in 1967. When we asked as innocently as possible on Ancestry if the woman who was clearly his grandmother's sister knew anything, we were told that no women in the family had a baby in Cambridge in 1967, they were all in California. We didn't expect any better, but some girl was sent to summer camp in Massachusetts that year.

In the extended family, two fathers turn out not to be fathers. The now elderly daughters are not being told. Why would we?

We are not ready for this level of truth in the world.

traditionalguy said...

OK. Mother in law got put in her place. The guy did the right thing to protect the wife and daughter from her.

Wait 10 years and start over.

Yancey Ward said...

And if it had turned out the granddaughter wasn't an actual blood relative, what would the grandmother have done about it?

It is crossing a line but if the grandmother were going to do this she needed to keep the test and its results to herself. She is an idiot.

Rory said...

"Did this other person participate in gossip about the child's paternity, motivating the grandmother to whip out her proof?"

This is undoubtedly it.

AMDG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dave Begley said...

The wages of promiscuity. Maybe the Ten Commandments were right.

Dave Begley said...

I met a woman (for a date/meetup) that I knew slightly from high school. My high school was all boys. She told me that the man who raised her wasn't her father. He had gone back to school later in life and her mom cheated on her husband at her place of work. She was the result.

I thought it was bizarre that she told me this at our first and only meeting.

But here's a better story. I'm sitting in district court for a cattle call. The case before me was a paternity case. The father was in default. The judge - an exceptional guy - carefully went through service on this guy.

The questioning then turned to what rate of pay to impute to this guy. The mother's lawyer said that the McDonald's in Fremont was paying $15.

Somehow the mom volunteers that the father is in the Saunders County jail.

The judge then asks about health insurance. Medicaid?

Woman: No, my husband's health insurance.

Light quickly goes on with the judge and he apologizes profusely.

Her husband was in the back of the courtroom the whole time. Drama in small town Nebraska!

CrankyProfessor said...

Her SON has cut off relations? What about her daughter-in-law?
I think this is a problem of too few children. If this woman had more grandchildren, she'd realize they don't always look like their fathers.

Sally327 said...

Prince Harry gets this a lot, that he's not King Charles' son, that Jame Hewitt (one of Princess Diana's purported lovers although well after Harry was born, I think) is the real father. And Khloe Kardashian gets it as well, that Robert Kardashian is not her father, that O.J. Simpson is.

"Just waft the idea and watch the daughter-in-law's face and listen to her response. Then you'll have your answer... if you can read it right."

Assuming the daughter-in-law understands DNA. None of these people seem very bright. I feel bad for the kid, Hopefully they're keeping this whole sordid story from her.

I wonder how many times someone is asked for a DNA sample and substitutes someone else's. I think it would be funny to provide one from my dog.

Michael said...


Eight years ago in Oregon came a story about the oldest of three adult siblings having suspicions and thus secretly testing the DNA of his youngest sister. Turns out they had separate fathers. Asked his dad who had no idea mom was having a torrid affair back then. Broke the family up with everyone agreeing the oldest brother is an azzhole.

tim maguire said...

My son has all but cut connections with me

This woman sounds like a piece of work and forgiveness should be hard in coming, but "all but cut connections"? That's a big step even for this.

I suspect this was not her only transgression. Her son was probably already pretty well sick of her antics and tired of defending her to his wife.

MadTownGuy said...

From the post:

"Did Jesus Christ look "like a clone of [his] mother"? (I know: different sex. But still.)("With the facts in place, there is only one conclusion: Jesus was trans, as he would have been born as a genetic copy of Mary, but transitioned to male at some point.")"

Sounds like it was written by someone who disbelieves the virgin birth, so I can't take it seriously. But here's a response from that thread:

"The God who created the heavens and the earth from nothing would not find it difficult to whip up a Y chromosome in a pinch."

Jersey Fled said...

A high school friend that I ran into recently told me that he found out he had a half sister he never knew about through a DNA test. His father had two families, one in NJ and one in Ohio.

Rusty said...

Ya know. After some point, in a family, it may just be better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Ann Althouse said...

"The wages of promiscuity. Maybe the Ten Commandments were right."

How does that relate to the text under discussion, the grandmother's letter?

Ann Althouse said...

Is there a Commandment about being suspicious of others? Of honoring thy adult children?

Ann Althouse said...

"Sounds like it was written by someone who disbelieves the virgin birth, so I can't take it seriously."

No, it doesn't! Those people would just assume that Joseph impregnated Mary.

traditionalguy said...

Hey, leave Jesus out of it. He had the Father God for his father. That’s why a mere human death on a Roman cross, one of millions, means we can be justified 2000 years later. The Blood of that man born of a woman was God’s eternal blood.

Ann Althouse said...

"The God who created the heavens and the earth from nothing would not find it difficult to whip up a Y chromosome in a pinch."

I don't know why you think a universe of magic, patched together, is more impressive than something that is entirely coherent, down to the smallest details.

Kevin said...

This would not be a problem if you could believe all women.

Justin_O_Guy said...

The female who provided the spit May have been who leaked, guys..
I'm pretty sure the old woman didn't.

Paul said...

When one leaves one's DNA, or fingerprints, in public IT IS NOT THEIR PROPERTY ANYMORE.

So I'd not be pissed if someone got my DNA and checked it against whatever...IF they got it in a public setting where I discarded it.

You leave your DNA and finger prints everywhere folks... get over it.

Dave Begley said...

Ann:

I have a hard time figuring out all these sex issues. For a long time, I wasn't sure what a trans man was.

Sydney said...

Certainly one for the annals of bad mother-in-laws. The woman doesn’t even seem genuinely sorry for what she did.

Rick67 said...

I had a great-aunt, supposedly the youngest of several children, the oldest of whom was my maternal grandmother. For several years there has been open and respectful conversations on that side of the family to the effect that this aunt was *not* the youngest of those several children, she was actually the child of a great-great-aunt, one of my great-grandmother's sisters. That there was a point in time where this great-great-grandmother spent several months sequestered in her sister's house. And that's right around when this great-aunt was born.

I can't remember the details such as *why* this pregnancy and birth were kept secret. I bring this up because sometimes we think "these are her parents, she is their child" but the true story is different.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Ann Althouse said...

"The wages of promiscuity. Maybe the Ten Commandments were right."

How does that relate to the text under discussion, the grandmother's letter?

Forget it Althouse. It's Begley-town.

M said...

It should be standard practice to dna test all new borns. I don’t believe all this “there’s so much cheating in the past!” We’ve done all my families dna and family trees with there were zero surprises. Just the one we already knew about of a great great great grandmother having gotten pregnant by her fiancé who didn’t make it back from WWI and so her family raised the baby and she went off to college and a new life. Stupid they didn’t get married before he went. They had a big wedding planned and she didn’t want to change it to a quick, small wedding before he shipped out.

Ice Nine said...

>MadTownGuy said...
Sounds like it was written by someone who disbelieves the virgin birth, so I can't take it seriously.<

OK, well, there's the most hilarious statement I've read so far today.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

What tempted the grandmother to give in, not only to her unseemly curiosity, but to telling someone else what she did? Did she not realize how wrong she was?

I'm sure on some level she knew it was wrong, which is why she blabbed about it to another family member. She wanted them to tell her it was ok. This is also the same reason she's writing Carolyn Has, she's hoping for absolution.

chuck said...

An advice columnist with strange relationship problems ;) But that has always been a thing with Hax. I recall when her first marriage was falling apart, which was obvious in the column, but not acknowledged until later.

Firehand said...

There was a case about 15(I think) years ago, short version was wife cheated on husband, got pregnant, had the baby. Year or two later the husband became suspicious, had the test run, "You're not the father." Confronted her, she confessed, he wanted a divorce, and in the hearing she demanded child support, it went downhill badly from there.

State legislator hearing about this proposed a law requiring DNA testing of newborns so if such came up again it would be found out then rather than later. The yelling was what you'd expect, which included the head of a feminist group insisting "It's nobody's business but the mothers who the father is!" Which went over about as well as you'd expect.

Birches said...

I had a baby last year when our oldest was 17. A grandma we know from school said the same thing had happened to her when she was 16. She made sure to wear a bikini all that summer so there wouldn't be any confusion about who had the baby. Apparently they had neighbors back then where the daughter went away for a little while and then Mom "had a baby."

Lilly, a dog said...

I'm more perplexed by Begley's second post, especially his "better story."

Disappointment

Sebastian said...

"What evils, great and small, have they committed in the name of their suspicions?"

Terrible evils, no doubt. How do they compare to the actual evils of adultery, and in particular, to the evil of a life of falsehood inflicted on unsuspecting husbands and children? Let's add up the numbers and do a side-by-side comparison.

Mr Wibble said...

How does that relate to the text under discussion, the grandmother's letter?

"Honor they mother and father."
"Thou shalt not commit adultery."

The wife failed on both accounts. The grandmother has a perfectly justified reason to want to protect her son, and to protect her own interests in not giving away money to support a child to which she has no biological relationship.

Roger Sweeny said...

from Razib Khan, the genetics expert:

One of the most interesting and strange things I’ve ever posted about has to do with extra-pair paternity rates. Basically, the rate of cuckoldry.

I first got interested in the topic because people kept bringing up the chestnut that 10% of children have misattributed biological paternity. That is, their biological father is different than the father who raises them. This is a “fact” I’ve encountered from many biologists and the public. But like the “fact” that you use only 10% of your brain, this seems more an infectious meme than a true fact.

A new paper out of the Netherlands confirms [1%]. ...How generalizable are these results? It seems entirely likely that the 1% figure applies across the Eurasian oikoumene (genotyping and surname analysis in China has found a similar number).

The curious thing about these results, which are replicated in numerous studies, is the denial they elicit. There is an online “cuckold community” which does not appreciate that their fetish is not as common as the old 10% number implies (I know about this community due to referrals from message boards). Then there are “men’s rights” activists, who simply can’t believe that women exhibit such fidelity. Finally, there are the sorts who wish to tear down bourgeois sexual norms, and valorize a past which did not exist.

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/09/24/the-cuckoldry-rate-in-complex-agricultural-societies-is-probably-1/

Mr Wibble said...

I had a baby last year when our oldest was 17. A grandma we know from school said the same thing had happened to her when she was 16. She made sure to wear a bikini all that summer so there wouldn't be any confusion about who had the baby. Apparently they had neighbors back then where the daughter went away for a little while and then Mom "had a baby."

You grew up in Alaska?!

Mr Wibble said...

State legislator hearing about this proposed a law requiring DNA testing of newborns so if such came up again it would be found out then rather than later. The yelling was what you'd expect, which included the head of a feminist group insisting "It's nobody's business but the mothers who the father is!" Which went over about as well as you'd expect.

Paternity testing should absolutely be required before a father's name is put on the birth certificate.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Well, a kid should start learning the truth starting at age 5, according to the Donor Conception Network, so maybe the mother-in-law had only the very best of intentions.

Quayle said...

"Is there a Commandment about being suspicious of others? "

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful [KJV renders this "thinketh no evil"];...

Then, another one: the resurrected Christ speaking to the ancient inhabitants of the Americas (somewhere), in about 34 AD, as written in the Book of Mormon:

"29 For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.

30 Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away."

Howard said...

I have a very old money last name. As the reigning Pater Familias, the old aunties wanted me to take a DNA test to see what branch of the famous family we were from. It turned out none. My true paternal heritage was from a more deplorable family typical of White Trash. I was delighted to find out, the aunties not so much.

Ralph L said...

My niece doesn't like bacon, so I wonder.

Bob Boyd said...

Speaking of the annals, did you know there's one called, The Annals of Unaccepted Apologies Following Anal?

Well there is.

Michael McNeil said...

Althouse writes…
I don't know why you think a universe of magic, patched together, is more impressive than something that is entirely coherent, down to the smallest details.

I get your point, and it's not a bad one, but it's important, I think, in this context to realize that the universe that physicists present to us as being the “real” world—backed up by much observational evidence—is decidedly not “entirely coherent, down to the smallest details.” Even ignoring (real) microscopic-level quantum phenomena whose effects percolate up into the human- (and larger-) scale macroscopic world, the cosmos that we see around us (at all scales: small, medium, and huge) is a mysterious and astounding place.

Anthropologist Loren Eiseley put it this way: {quoting…}

… if “dead” matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialist that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful powers, and may not impossibly be, as Hardy has suggested, “but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind.”

(Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, 1957)

Freeman Hunt said...

This part of the letter was strange:

"Before I could write a more direct apology — which would’ve been insincere — "

Heh. I think grandmother has bigger issues than doing surreptitious paternity tests.

Rocco said...

My wife's sister married young, had two kids, then her husband died. She remarried and had three more. The now adult kids all just had DNA testing done, and were intrigued to find out who had inherited the most Irish DNA, the Scottish DNA, the most Native American DNA, etc. (They are part Appalachain on both sides.) Surprisingly, the one with the most Native DNA was the very fair blue-eyed blonde who cannot tan at all.

This was brought on by my wife and her sister getting tested. My wife is very proud of her Irish heritage and was mildly disappointed to learn her sister had slightly more Irish DNA.

tcrosse said...

My sister and I look exactly like our Dad. Mom was always pissed off that neither of us looked anything like her, but couldn't figure out a way to question our parentage.

Gemna said...

With 23 & Me, you can find out without even intending to. A few years ago, my father-in-law got a call from a cousin, that someone had matched up with him (the cousin) and another relative (I forget who), but the connections indicated this person was my father-in-law's half-brother. The parents were all dead by this point, and the half-brother had had no idea the man who raised him was not his father.

BG said...

As a grandmother of one, I believe it shouldn't matter the parentage of the grandchild. They need a grandmother's love just as much as any of the other children. I question that grandmother's love.

I had a cousin whose wife ran off with another guy who dumped her when she became pregnant. Wife came back and had the baby. My cousin raised that baby as his own, and all the rest of us accepted the baby into the family. It's not the kid's fault.

Rusty said...

For years everybody thought my younger brother was adopted. He has dark hair and brown eye while me and my older brother had light hair and green eyes. It turns out that my yonger brother is the image of our great grandfather on my mothers side. Down to the cowlick and the crooked smile.

Ice Nine said...

>(my wife had a one-afternoon stand in the second year of our marriage),<

It's the damnedest thing - they're almost always one-offs...

Bob Boyd said...

What evils, great and small, have they committed in the name of their suspicions?

Reminds me of part of the plot of The Big Sky by A B Guthrie Jr.

William said...

Well, it was worth a shot. That woman dresses like a floozie, and you should see the way she keeps house. Maybe after the passage of time, when the air clears, she can make up with her son and show him the error of his ways. He deserves so much better than what he settled for.

Aggie said...

"The results of this test leaked out via another family member......

No; the results of this test were leaked out by you, ya blabbermouth.

A lot of good course corrections are quietly made by people that know how to keep their mouth shut. And out society is better off, for it. But not many people know how to keep their mouth shut.

This busybody is still telling herself she did the right thing, instead of confronting her sins and asking forgiveness. I wonder if she could even articulate why, to herself.

Rabel said...

"I don't know why you think a universe of magic, patched together, is more impressive than something that is entirely coherent, down to the smallest details."

If I understand this, the argument that Jesus was trans also assumes the occurrence of the "magic" of a virgin birth and lacks the small detail of how the transition happened (magic again?), which contradicts the coherence claim.

Gusty Winds said...

Blogger Michael said...

Asked his dad who had no idea mom was having a torrid affair back then. Broke the family up with everyone agreeing the oldest brother is an azzhole.

It's NOT OK for a woman to dupe any man into raising another man's child. The emotional and financial investment is a lifetime. And the secret doesn't stay hidden forever.

For men, you have to be a scumbag to sire a child and not support it, and for women, you are a scumbag if you become pregnant through infidelity and LIE to another man about the child's paternity.

The odds of the grandma's suspicions being true regarding her daughter-in-law's fidelity are 50/50.

If the daughter in law is livid enough to force here husband to cut off his mother...maybe the mother's spidey sense got a little too close to the target.

n.n said...

So, a male with feminine dreams of gender emulation? Or a male trans/homosexual with a heterosexual fetish? Or a male in Levine's clothing?

Dave Begley said...

Lilly:

The point of my story is that there was a whole lot of private family drama that lead to that day in the District Court of Washington County. A whole lot of other options could have happened.

I was also super impressed with Judge John Sampson who recently retired. Excellent judge.

Gospace said...

1. How often does it happen that someone secretly acquires a DNA sample from another person and gets it tested? It's always wrong, so there would not usually be confessions.

Ah- the sample here in question was not "secretly" acquired. Her granddaughter gave it willingly. That others didn't know about, well, so what? My brother's father-in-law Ancestry DNA tested at least one of my brother's two daughters. I know because she's a DNA match to me. I suspect he tested both- but haven't asked. Can't ask him now- he's deceased, as is my brother.

Your second set of questions completely immaterial to anything. In my mind, "Who Cares?".

Question 3:3. How often has it happened, across the great span of human existence, that family members have gazed upon the face of an innocent child and formed ideas about who, really, is the father? A lot. What evils, great and small, have they committed in the name of their suspicions? Oh, murder, regicide, wars, and other such things. Probably a lot of wife beating among the commoners... Here's a link to one of many comparison photos of Prince Harry and his mother's riding instructor: https://royalfamily.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Diana-Harry-and-James.jpg If DNA were done- under still extant British law, and the riding instructor is his father- the death penalty is the punishment for the riding instructor. TBH- I suspect DNA testing has been furtively done, and the results licked away.

DNA testing reveals a lot. Don't get one if you don't like surprises, because there will be some. How close or far they are is another matter. My half-nephew tested- and so far everyone even remotely related to my half sister has rebuffed any contact with me- including the DNA matched half-nephew. Public records can only reveal so much. As in- I know one of 4 brothers is his father, but don't know which one's wife is my half-sister... Obituaries only have so much info.

DNA matches also hint my great-grandfather had 5 other children besides my grandfather. What I refer to as my Tioga County PA mystery matches. They match me, my niece and first cousin, numerous other people from my family, but their trees don't intersect mine or, curiously, each others going back 5 generations. And the DNA match indicates a closer then that relation. Had 4 mystery matches, then a 5th showed up. He's interested in solving the mystery. His great-grandfather, who would be my half-great-uncle, was adopted. And born in the right timeframe to be my great-grandfather's child. I need a DNA test from another line of descendants to prove it, and am contacting people now to get them to test.

Michael K said...

DNA testing reveals a lot. Don't get one if you don't like surprises, because there will be some.

We discovered a new relative via DNA. He had been given up for adoption by my wife's sister (now deceased). He contacted my daughter as a cousin. She talked to me about it as the birth mother was very ill. We decided to tell him and he contacted her and visited (I think) before she died.

He was a successful guy in Hollywood and loved his adoptive parents but just wanted to know where he came from.

Tom T. said...

Carolyn's live chat today included a question about political disagreement between spouses, and the results in the chat and the comments are great fun. Everyone there is totally intolerant and unwilling to consider that opposing views might be held in good faith, and of course they're all terrified of "extremism."

Iman said...

“It's the damnedest thing - they're almost always one-offs...”

Once smitten, twice shy?

Iman said...

I betcha that damn Chuck has a pack of short-haired puppies somewhere…

Mr Wibble said...

As a grandmother of one, I believe it shouldn't matter the parentage of the grandchild. They need a grandmother's love just as much as any of the other children. I question that grandmother's love.

A child isn't entitled to the love of a stranger. If the child was a bastard, then mom should go bug the bio-dad's mother.

I had a cousin whose wife ran off with another guy who dumped her when she became pregnant. Wife came back and had the baby. My cousin raised that baby as his own, and all the rest of us accepted the baby into the family. It's not the kid's fault.

Your cousin was a weak idiot. As was the rest of your family.

Smilin' Jack said...

“Did Jesus Christ look "like a clone of [his] mother"? (I know: different sex. But still.)("With the facts in place, there is only one conclusion: Jesus was trans, as he would have been born as a genetic copy of Mary, but transitioned to male at some point.")”

There are many other interesting questions. E.g.:

“Mark 6:3. names James, Joses, Judas (conventionally known in English as Jude) and Simon as the brothers of Jesus, and Matthew 13:55, which probably used Mark as its source, gives the same names in different order, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas.”

So…was there more than one Son of God? Or was Mary stepping out on Him? Be careful with your answers…remember, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Jupiter said...

WaPo? Never happened.

Biff said...

If I were forced to bet, I would bet that I do not share DNA with the man who raised me. In a similar vein, I probably would be able to make a better-than-even bet on who actually did supply the DNA. No matter. I don't need a DNA test. The man who raised me was as fine of a man as one could hope for as a father, and he will forever be my father, no matter where my DNA came from.

On a related (no pun intended) note, as the cost of DNA sequencing continues to plummet, it will become much more common - even routine - to sequence the complete genomes of newborn babies in detail for the purposes of personalized medicine and disease screening. That translates into a lot of difficult conversations.

Jupiter said...

"How often does it happen that someone secretly acquires a DNA sample from another person and gets it tested? It's always wrong, so there would not usually be confessions."

Well, the police do it all the time.

Kirk Parker said...

"With 23 & Me, you can find out without even intending to."

We had a hilarious DNA testing moment in our family recently.

Our oldest (of four) got tested, and along with his results got a list of matches including one full sibling with a name he had never heard of.

You can imagine his puzzlement... Eventually he reaches out to his siblings, trying to be real subtle about it, saying something like "do you know anything about Mom and Dad and other children...?"

Turns out our youngest had gotten tested a year or two previously, but used a fictitious name (bon't ask me why.)

Mr Wibble said...

“Mark 6:3. names James, Joses, Judas (conventionally known in English as Jude) and Simon as the brothers of Jesus, and Matthew 13:55, which probably used Mark as its source, gives the same names in different order, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas.”

So…was there more than one Son of God? Or was Mary stepping out on Him? Be careful with your answers…remember, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.


IIRC, the phrase "brothers" actually translates from a word that is more widely used for male relatives, so it's possible that they were Jesus's cousins. Also, it's possible that they were older half-siblings.

Ralph L said...

great great great grandmother having gotten pregnant by her fiancé who didn’t make it back from WWI
One of mine married at 23 a Revolutionary veteran the year of the Constitutional Convention--1787. In his line, assuming it was all as advertised, it's averaged 40 years a generation for 300 years.

BG said...

Mr. Wibble,
I will not quibble with you.
I am firm in my view that my relatives are anything but weak.

JAORE said...

Does anyone believe all was sweetness and light in this family until the birth of the "suspicious child". I don't.

I can just imagine the spoken or unspoken slights this bitch has leveled at her daughter-in-law throughout the marriage.

JAORE said...

I've always (silently) laughed at those who have genealogy charts saying I'm the great, great, (yada-yada-yada) grandson of Charlamane.

It all supposes granny, six generations before) was faithful, or was not raped by the huns.

Rocco said...

JAORE said...
“I've always (silently) laughed at those who have genealogy charts saying I'm the great, great, (yada-yada-yada) grandson of Charlamane. It all supposes granny, six generations before) was faithful, or was not raped by the huns.“

If you are of European descent, you almost certainly *are* descended from Charlemagne.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/

Birches said...

My mom's family has had DNA testing. No surprise children. I expected to have another half sibling somewhere out there, but thus far, nothing.