The complicated world of DNA surprises

 Regarding the article "Missed Connections, Inside the world of DNA surprises," written by Jennifer Wilson and published in the August 25, 2025 edition of the New Yorker:

Those of us interested in genealogy have always known that there was an element of doubt in the matter of paternity in our genealogical ancestry.  We were not able to quantify that doubt, but we knew it existed.  Thus, it seemed fruitless to trace one's ancestry back too far because there were bound to be some cases of paternal ancestors which weren't our biological ancestors, even though they appear in research and documentation as such.  Our present ability to scientifically determine who our nearest paternal ancestors are, has created a number of other concerns which the article and Wikipedia references.   There is now an acceptable term to describe the phenomenon, N.P.E., which stands for "Non-Paternity-Event."  Some notable experiences developed once it became easy to check one's genealogy are referenced in the article, for example, 

Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, Kara Rubinstein Deyerin – Speaker | Advocate | Storyteller , has made a name for herself in this arena:   "She was raised in Seattle as the daughter of a white mother and an African American father.  As she grew up, Rubenstein Deyerin, like many Black Americans, became curious about her African origins, a history lost in the slave trade.  "I said, 'Dad, let's take one of those tests.'  But when she opened her DNA pie chart, her sample didn't cluster with any part of the African continent.  Instead, a large portion was labelled 'Ashkenazi.'"  'I had never heard of it, Rubinstein Deyerin told me'.  She called her mother:  Her mother said, 'But I don't know anyone Jewish.'  I was , like, well, you knew at least one."

There is a potential for lawsuits.  For example, if a person discovers she is the result of an N.P.E and that her hitherto unknown biological father had an inheritable disease that her mother and her biological father kept secret from her, for example, from Wikipedia:  Ashkenazi Jews have a higher risk of certain inherited genetic conditions, including Tay-Sachs disease, Gaucher disease, Canavan disease, cystic fibrosis, and familial dysautonomia. These are autosomal recessive disorders, meaning an individual must inherit two copies of the altered gene, one from each parent, to develop the condition. Carrier screening is recommended for all Ashkenazi Jewish individuals and their partners, especially before or during pregnancy, to identify carriers and inform family planning decisions."  

When Rubenstein Deyerin contacted her wealthy biological family. it didn't go well.  Her mother was 18 at the time, and her biological father was Sam Rubinstein, a 50 year old wealthy philanthropist.  Rubenstein Deyerin obviously had her named changed, since she didn't know about the Rubenstein connection until she got her DNA results and questioned her mother.  

The article states, "In regard to how much an individual's ancestral records can be considered to be compromised by N.P.E.'s, "A few years ago, a research team at Baylor college of Medicine surveyed more than twenty-three thousand customers of these kits and learned that three per cent of them had discovered that a person whom they'd believed to be their biological parent wasn't.  (That number is in line with a 2005 study from a university in Liverpool which found a 3.7-per-cent median rate of misattributed paternity in the general population.)  If the ratio holds, that means around two million Americans who have taken one of these tests are N.P.E.s".

And also, I wonder, since the Mormon church uses assumed genealogies in their theological concerns, whether they have issued a papal-like statement in regard to how such matters as N.P.E.'s are to be viewed by the church.

After the buffalo went away

 

In this morning's news letter from The New Yorker is an article on "loss."

"When the Princeton classicist Dan-el Padilla Peralta was going up for a promotion to full professor, in early 2023, it occurred to him that one of the central preoccupations of his career was loss. Being a scholar of the preservation of knowledge, he realized, also made him an expert on its destruction."

The New Yorker writer Jonathan Lear condenses Padilla Peralta's comments about some books, one of them is Radical Hope by Jonathan Lear:  "The book is organized around a statement by Plenty Coups, who was a longtime chief of the Crow Nation. Shortly before he died, he gave an interview where he said, “When the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this, nothing happened.” One of Lear’s goals is to tease out the significance of those last words, “nothing happened.”

I doubt I'll order the Padilla Peralta book, but the Plenty Coups' comment has been something to think about.   I have given a lot of thought recently to the matter of leaving the Marine Corps back in 1955 when I had the rank of "buck" Sergeant.  I was interviewed by a not-very-articulate sergeant who offered me some incentives if I would stay in.  My current duty, was rifle instructing at Camp Pendleton.  I did extremely well, never failing to get any of my charges qualified.  Thus, I was offered an immediate increase in rank to Staff Sergeant.  That was definitely not a common occurrence by the time that someone's three-year enlistment was over.  No doubt I was appreciated, but also the Marine Corps needed to replenish the Staff Sergeant ranks because they lost so many during the Korean War (I had been given an increase while I was in Korea, to corporal, for the same reason).  When I enlisted, the war was still going on and my first assignment was to the El Toro Lighter than Air base, an easy drive from my home in Wilmington California.  I enlisted to get away from home; so I immediately asked to be sent to Korea.  It wasn't hard to find someone who didn't want to go, so I went in his place.  That also was considered an admirable trait in a Marine; however I wasn't thinking in those terms when my enlistment was up.  I had been sent to Twenty Tine Palms after I got back from Korea, the most unpleasant, boring place I had ever lived in.  I spent my free time at the base library resolving to leave the boring Marine Corps as soon as possible.  Shortly thereafter a request was sent around for Marines who had fired Expert who wanted to become rifle coaches at Camp Pendleton (where the weather was much better) I signed up at once, packed up my sea bag, and a short bus ride took me to my new duty station.

Now, in relation to the Plenty Coups' comment, I "thought" all the buffalo had gone away when I left Korea.  There were some stressful moments over there, but I never saw actual combat.  I did check out the chances of being sent to the front -- not the only Marine who had done that -- but was told they weren't accepting any more such transfers inasmuch as there were truce talks going on; so I settled into being there for the full 13 months.  I was there for the last two battle seasons.  My very first job was to guard three prisoners who had gotten drunk and drove to a town over-seen by the Air Force Police from the much more populous Air Force Base a mile or so from our base.  They ordered the Marines away.  There was a confrontation and all the Air Police were killed.  

There were about 130 of us there where the Yellow sea came up through our barbed-wire fence and then withdrew so far we could no longer see it.  I soon made a lot of friends who taught me to drink beer, smoke, and a number of other things.  They didn't twist my arm, I was happy to fit in and be one of them, and I was.  Each month a "draft" would have completed its thirteen months over there and be sent home.  Each month there was a party for those going home.  No one I was stationed with at Kunsan and Cheju Island was sent to the same duty station I was at Twenty Nine Palms.  I believed the buffalo had gone away.

After a few months I became a rifle coach at Camp Pendleton and enjoyed that duty even more than duty at Kunsan and as much as at Cheju Island, but I wasn't sophisticated enough being only 19 to evaluate the disappearance of the buffalo.  Even though I enjoyed duty as a rifle coach at Camp Pendleton, I had previously done some boring time with peace-time Marines at Twenty-Nine Palms.  I don't recall how long I was there, but it was long enough to decide I didn't like the peace-time Marines and with no new wars on the horizon, I resolved to leave after my enlistment was up and go to college.   Had I gone straight from Korea to Camp Pendleton perhaps I would have decided to stay in, but I had the negative experience of Twenty-Nine Palms and wanted out.   I never reevaluated matters at Camp Pendleton.  I simply set aside thinking about getting out.  It was never a matter for discussion until I was called in and asked if I was going to "ship over" (the Marine Corps term for reenlisting), and by that time I realized that after we had gotten everyone requalified, I would be sent back to my duty station at 29 Palms.  Although if I knew of some other place I'd like to go, perhaps I could have told the reenlistment sergeant I wanted to go there and see if that was possible, but I didn't know of any such place other than Embassy duty.  The reenlistment sergeant said the waiting list for that was very long.     

I started work at Douglas Aircraft Company because I had bills to pay, not because I thought of it as beginning a career.  Had the Buffalo gone?  Well, maybe so, but I was probably more versatile than Plenty Coups.  I did well in Douglas Aircraft Engineering, and was working on my Master's Degree at night, but after some unpleasant experiences with a college professor who gave me what I thought was a view into what my life would be like if I entered that field.  I had a good excuse for dropping out of the Master's program.  A number of college graduates went to work at Douglas in order to pay bills and earn enough money to return to college.  Douglas frowned on that and took a hard look at people who were working on advance degrees at night; so I gave that up, and reconciled myself to a life in engineering.  Had the buffalo gone or not?

Perhaps I need a new analogy.  Perhaps at some point I abandoned hunting the buffalo.   But, I would contend, the buffalo were not what they used to be and I had lived so long that the buffalo I knew had grown old and died.  The days are dusty now.  It's hard to breathe when I spend too much time outside listening for hoof beats.  I can no longer mount a horse; so when I am honest with myself I must admit that it makes no difference whether the buffalo come back or not, but if they do, I must assert in my own defense, they won't look anything like the buffalo I was familiar with back in the Corps and I most certainly won't want to hunt them.  But that doesn't, at least for me, eliminate a sense of loss.  

Sometimes, late at night drinking a cup of espresso, I wonder how my life would have turned out if I'd told that reenlistment sergeant, "Okay, make me a staff sergeant but leave me at Camp Pendleton as a rifle instructor."  He would have agreed to that, but in thinking about that reconstruction, I would have been at Camp Pendleton when Lee Harvey Oswald went there to re-qualify.  He had not qualified before and as head of the "unqualified" detail I would almost certainly have improved his ability to shoot (but probably not more than the coach, whoever he was, who actually trained him).   I have never given any thought to how I would feel if I were the one to have qualified Oswald.  I have though often wondered how the coach who did qualify him felt afterwards  Maybe the buffalo that I longed for would have stampeded right over me if I had reenlisted.  Also, after I had been in for four or five years of my reenlistment, Vietnam would have been warming up, and the person I became subsequent to the life as a Marine was not happy with the way our leaders fought that war.  Would it have been enough for me to simply suck it up and do my best; which I would certainly have done, or would something else have happened which I wouldn't have been happy with if I had managed to survive and return home?  When I go on one of these memory trips, I do sometimes wish I'd stayed in the Corps, but the wishing fizzles quite a bit when I travel into subsequent years . . . sitting here, for example, two months shy of my ninety-first birthday, in better health than most people who become this age, drinking espresso, while the cleaning lady is downstairs cleaning, finishing up this email and getting ready to return to the book I'm currently reading, "Maddy's Floor," by Dale Mayer, probably not a work of great literature, but entertaining.  Sometimes I feel a bit guilty because I am not concentrating on writing or reading something "worth while."  On the other hand, when I do bear-down mentally and work on something serious, i discover that my blood pressure goes up, and high blood pressure is the only ailment my doctors are concerned about controlling.  I have never discussed poetry with any of my doctors and probably never will.  I'm quite convinced that nothing I have to do is going to bring a single buffalo clumping down the street I live on.  There is a saying to the effect that if you hear hoofbeats, think Horses and not Zebras.  Maybe one shouldn't think about buffalo either.  Maybe I should read the Jonathan Lear book.

 

 

My fist

The concept was just a bit ago

Clear; then in its midst I lost

The ability to move.  I must

It seems, be able to clench

My fist and then my mind in that

Order.  Without that I merely dream,

Drifting like a slow moving cloud

Whose outline seems fixed until

Measured against another. 

Even if I think out loud and in

The brief time past look down, 

I can watch my fist unfurl.

On a sunny Friday nearby

 

“Just swallow the sunshine”

Pressed the Shadow.  Well

For him to say in his hiding.

I’ve lost substance by his

Side these passed few years,

Cloven from shielded eyes.

The last of us trudged up

Here to set our baskets down

Saying one to the other,

“This much is good” and

Began to weep.  There

Was music pulsating 

Behind.  Urging inexorably

Our staying here in this

Place till we

Who can still stand

Crane our necks and stare

At the sun till we go blind.

Marching, Marching

 

Pushing open the wrought-iron gate

I’d had enough of just looking in –

Needing to be there on the other

Side.  I let it slam behind me.

The clang introduced an

Element of doubt.  I had skills

My history proved them,

But no evidence of this,

Clicking through to a place

I’d neither studied for

Nor imagined.  Looking 

About I saw they neither

Dressed nor looked like me

Their hair hung in tatters.

Their homework was rolled up

Under their arms.  Up on the

Walls, well armed guards

Walked to and fro; yet

No one challenged me for

Being there.  It wasn’t long

Before I learned my place.

Life moved swiftly then.

My dreams of Susan

Faded.  My doubts

About being there when

She was not diminished.

The cripple-ness in my knee

Began to spread.

Outside in the morning

Walking across the front lawn

Early in this chirping-crisp brisk

Morning – the sun blinking its

Bright light through the trees,

Breezes meandering, spread

Widely enough to stir the leaves,

And grasses and flowers beneath them.

How often did I wake here

Trousers cinched with a broad

Belt, my ancient Ninety-two

Pulling them further down than

They did when we were new?

I might know if I were thinking

Clearly, the way to the top.

There was a time I wouldn’t stop

On such a morning until I stood 

Up there, drinking espresso

From my thermos’ cup, but I

Can’t make it beyond here, this

Morning, being too old and feeble

For anything more than this.

Sailing back from some place else

 

We were often there, taking 

The stairs two at a time

While the chance of falling

Wasn’t a consideration, and

A helping hand being there

Was for touch and not

Really for help.  I recall

The touch.  I thought I could

Handle losing it, but failed

To understand the breaking

Down of her understanding,

That withdrawing

Touch of consequence, 

Memory loss, loss of most

Of what she was.  I would

Have stayed at sea if she could

Have stayed, but she was

Slowly leaving in her mind,

Me hearing her go in every

Conversation, time trickling away

Like sand through my fingers.