Gene match

DNA testing technology has spawned commercial ancestry services that help individuals learn all about their family history or find long lost relatives.

One popular ancestry service provider, 23andMe based in San Francisco, California, sells genetic testing kits to subscribers and analyzes their saliva to determine their ancestry. Its website stores the DNA analyses of 15 million customers.

A California lawyer, however, is urging customers to delete their accounts on the 23andMe website as its owners are selling the bankrupt company and the new buyer may not guarantee the privacy of customers’ data, CNN reports.

Meanwhile, another genealogy company’s subscriber thought that her link to Irish people, based on the result of her DNA test done nearly 10 years ago, was wrong.

That was until the woman from southern England, who is in the genealogy company’s family tree, was contacted six years ago by someone with genes that matched hers, BBC reports.

The stranger claimed he was her brother. The parents of the woman in her mid-70s were already deceased and her older brother insisted that they were siblings, so no one could say if she was adopted. Her daughter then obtained a copy of all birth records at a local hospital when her mom was born and found the surname of a girl matching that of the stranger who called her.

They realized that she was apparently mixed up with another baby at the time, when it was not yet a hospital practice to put identification bands on a newborn’s ankles and keep mother and child together through their stay.

In maternity care in the 1950s, babies were separated from their mothers and placed together in large nursery rooms under the care of midwives.

“It may be that staff didn’t attach a card or tag immediately, or that it simply fell off and was put back on the wrong baby or on the wrong crib,” said Jason Tang from the London law firm Russell Cooke which is representing Susan, not her real name, according to BBC.

Susan received an undisclosed amount in compensation from the United Kingdom’s National Health Service for the mistake and started building a relationship with her biological brother who looks just like her.