Virginia

that DNA techniques are being used to bring closure to families of long-deceased persons, closure is slowly being denied to those living people who are trying to find their biological relatives. I know, I was one of them.

I got in while the getting was good, about ten years ago. I call that the Golden Age of DNA, because back then, people were helpful and trusting in dealing with a person like me, who was trying to figure out his heritage despite a deeply sealed adoption. Then, DNA came into the news for solving old cold cases, and you could really feel the tide starting to turn when reports came out on the so-called Golden State Killer, who was busted by using investigative DNA techniques.

Now, few people want to see a murderer get off free, but then again, nobody wants to finger a somewhat distant relative, so people stopped doing DNA testing. And when they did, they either chose to make the results non-public, or they cut back drastically on the information they'd post on a profile. It got to be so tough, that I developed techniques to find people's family trees off of very little information, and got darned good at it.

My journey was successful, about two and a half years ago I made contact with my biological mother and a half sister. We have been close ever since. But I feel for those who will never know because a source of information was put to an unintended use, and it ruined things for everybody else.