LilMtnCbn
08-15-2004, 05:50 AM
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/9397802.htm?1c
DNA bank project could reunite adoptees, birth parents
MITCH STACY
Associated Press
SARASOTA, Fla. - Linda Hammer remembers a caller to her radio show who told of
spending $100,000 for medical tests trying to find the cause of a young
daughter's mysterious illness.
The child eventually died, without doctors ever figuring out exactly what
happened. It wasn't until two years later - when the girl's mother found her
own birth mother after years of searching - that she learned of a rare genetic
disorder in her biological family, a problem that likely killed her child.
If she had found her birth mother earlier, the woman lamented, her daughter
might have been saved.
Hammer, a Sarasota resident who has helped thousands of adoptees find birth
families through her people-finding Web site, weekly radio show and newspaper
column, loves the warm, fuzzy side of those reunions. But she's also seen how
profoundly they can impact lives.
Now the former private investigator is hoping to incorporate science into the
effort with an ambitious new project: a DNA bank where samples from adoptees
and birth parents who are searching for one another can be added to a central
database to be compared with other samples for possible matches.
The theory is that the genetic fingerprint could be the only way to reunite
adoptees with birth parents in the many cases where names were changed, birth
certificates were altered or babies were bought on the black market. Sometimes
no paper trail existed, and adoption records remain closed in all but a handful
of states.
"This isn't really about search and reunions, it's about knowing who you are,"
said the 50-year-old Hammer, co-founder of the nonprofit Touched by Adoption
advocacy group, based in Walton, Ky. "A lot of this stuff is life or death."
Hammer, who is not an adoptee herself, wants the service to be free to
everyone, which means her organization is starting to raise money for the
project, to be based at DNA Diagnostic Center Inc. in Cincinnati. An initial
fund-raising dinner is set for next month and others are planned. It's expected
to cost more than $1 million to set up the project and bank the first 5,000
samples.
Adoptees and birth parents who want to participate will be sent a kit with
cotton swabs to take three samples from the inside of their cheeks, said Jim
Hanigan, a spokesman for DNA Diagnostic Center. The swabs are then mailed back
to the lab, where 16 DNA markers will be extracted for comparison with other
samples in the database.
While many labs offer DNA banking, paternity testing and various other
services, Hanigan believes this is the first time the technology has been used
to assist people searching for family members. DNA Diagnostic Center is one of
the country's largest labs, currently doing about 75 percent of all DNA
paternity testing.
"The opportunities for DNA testing are widening all the time, and it's more
than the normal forensics things you see on TV," Hanigan said. "And this is a
great one."
The National Council for Adoption, based in Alexandria, Va., estimates that 5
million to 6 million people in the United States have been adopted. Lee Allen,
spokesman for the nonprofit advocacy group, said many states already have
registries for adoptees and birth parents who are looking for each other, which
is basically the low-tech method of doing what Hammer wants to do with DNA.
The organization welcomes any effort that will help bring together adoptees and
birth parents who want to find each other, Allen said, but he questioned
whether the cost will warrant the relatively few reunions such a project is
likely to produce.
"I think it could be helpful," Allen said. "I think the difficulty will be
promoting it and getting this kind of registry well known."
Hammer, whose Saturday afternoon radio show is heard in the Sarasota-Bradenton
area on WTMY-AM, is undeterred by the cost and the legwork involved. She's
trying to promote the project among health care professionals and others who
realize the importance of people knowing their medical histories, and hopes to
spread the word with public service announcements for TV and radio.
She even envisions being able to reunite babies who were airlifted out of
Vietnam by the thousands in the 1970s with birth parents still in that country.
"They have a right to know who they are," she said. "I know who I am, and if I
didn't I'd be jumping up and down and making ugly faces about it. It's just not
fair."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
DNA bank project could reunite adoptees, birth parents
MITCH STACY
Associated Press
SARASOTA, Fla. - Linda Hammer remembers a caller to her radio show who told of
spending $100,000 for medical tests trying to find the cause of a young
daughter's mysterious illness.
The child eventually died, without doctors ever figuring out exactly what
happened. It wasn't until two years later - when the girl's mother found her
own birth mother after years of searching - that she learned of a rare genetic
disorder in her biological family, a problem that likely killed her child.
If she had found her birth mother earlier, the woman lamented, her daughter
might have been saved.
Hammer, a Sarasota resident who has helped thousands of adoptees find birth
families through her people-finding Web site, weekly radio show and newspaper
column, loves the warm, fuzzy side of those reunions. But she's also seen how
profoundly they can impact lives.
Now the former private investigator is hoping to incorporate science into the
effort with an ambitious new project: a DNA bank where samples from adoptees
and birth parents who are searching for one another can be added to a central
database to be compared with other samples for possible matches.
The theory is that the genetic fingerprint could be the only way to reunite
adoptees with birth parents in the many cases where names were changed, birth
certificates were altered or babies were bought on the black market. Sometimes
no paper trail existed, and adoption records remain closed in all but a handful
of states.
"This isn't really about search and reunions, it's about knowing who you are,"
said the 50-year-old Hammer, co-founder of the nonprofit Touched by Adoption
advocacy group, based in Walton, Ky. "A lot of this stuff is life or death."
Hammer, who is not an adoptee herself, wants the service to be free to
everyone, which means her organization is starting to raise money for the
project, to be based at DNA Diagnostic Center Inc. in Cincinnati. An initial
fund-raising dinner is set for next month and others are planned. It's expected
to cost more than $1 million to set up the project and bank the first 5,000
samples.
Adoptees and birth parents who want to participate will be sent a kit with
cotton swabs to take three samples from the inside of their cheeks, said Jim
Hanigan, a spokesman for DNA Diagnostic Center. The swabs are then mailed back
to the lab, where 16 DNA markers will be extracted for comparison with other
samples in the database.
While many labs offer DNA banking, paternity testing and various other
services, Hanigan believes this is the first time the technology has been used
to assist people searching for family members. DNA Diagnostic Center is one of
the country's largest labs, currently doing about 75 percent of all DNA
paternity testing.
"The opportunities for DNA testing are widening all the time, and it's more
than the normal forensics things you see on TV," Hanigan said. "And this is a
great one."
The National Council for Adoption, based in Alexandria, Va., estimates that 5
million to 6 million people in the United States have been adopted. Lee Allen,
spokesman for the nonprofit advocacy group, said many states already have
registries for adoptees and birth parents who are looking for each other, which
is basically the low-tech method of doing what Hammer wants to do with DNA.
The organization welcomes any effort that will help bring together adoptees and
birth parents who want to find each other, Allen said, but he questioned
whether the cost will warrant the relatively few reunions such a project is
likely to produce.
"I think it could be helpful," Allen said. "I think the difficulty will be
promoting it and getting this kind of registry well known."
Hammer, whose Saturday afternoon radio show is heard in the Sarasota-Bradenton
area on WTMY-AM, is undeterred by the cost and the legwork involved. She's
trying to promote the project among health care professionals and others who
realize the importance of people knowing their medical histories, and hopes to
spread the word with public service announcements for TV and radio.
She even envisions being able to reunite babies who were airlifted out of
Vietnam by the thousands in the 1970s with birth parents still in that country.
"They have a right to know who they are," she said. "I know who I am, and if I
didn't I'd be jumping up and down and making ugly faces about it. It's just not
fair."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
