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Honest Q: How does DNA testing tell you anything meaningful if you suspect a sperm donor conception? Presumably the donor was of the same race as your father.
by valarauko 7y ago
Honest Q: How does DNA testing tell you anything meaningful if you suspect a sperm donor conception? Presumably the donor was of the same race as your father.
- bradlys 7y agoCan't be guaranteed that the race is the same. I know that seems like some kind of "given" but it's clearly not in my case. I was born with brown eyes but both my parents had blue eyes. I looked nothing like them or the extended family. While that happens for non-sperm donor kids - it's exceptionally rare that they look nothing like anyone from the extended family on both sides. In my case - I probably look a lot like my biological father's side. In terms of what it tells you - it tells you what your potential ancestry could be. If you have parents who have no idea what they're ancestry is (mine don't) then you might have interest. Of course - once you do it... you're gonna find out you're a sperm donor child pretty fast.
- valarauko 7y agoIt's not guaranteed the race of the donor is the same as the father, but it's most often going to be the case. The discordant eye colour is not as conclusive as some people think, though. In one study, about 10% of the children of blue eyed parents had brown eyes. The genetics of eye colour isn't as simple as most people think it is. Of course, if you convince your parents to submit to a DNA test, then sure, the jig is up. In my day job, I'm a geneticist, and have worked on population genetic typing. There is a fair amount of heterogeneity in any population, so it wouldn't surpise me to see unusual patterns in the data. There's also the fact that consumer DNA tests oversell the granularity that can be gleaned about ancestry.