[D,D.Mattia Reporting] For some Americans, DNA results reveal ancestry about which they’d rather not know.
A recent surge in ancestral DNA home testing has found many people stunned by the results they get from a simple swab of saliva. Many people who had always assumed they were of Italian or Polish or Irish heritage, are discovering that what Grandma and Grandpa told them, might not have been the total truth — a sad fact that many folks find to be very unsettling.
One DNA testing company, DenyNA is trying to change all that.
“Where other ancestral DNA companies set out to find out what you really are, our goal at DenyNA is to find out what you’re really NOT. [Dr. Mildred Murray, CEO of DenyNA].
For the average John or Jane Doe, finding out that their family tree actually started out in Russia or Greece or Turkey, is no big deal, but for some people, long-forgotten ancestral secrets, printed out on a piece of paper for everyone to see, can cause great anxiety — and sometimes even death.
“It’s not unusual to find at lest one patient in my ER each day who is clutching their DNA results and having either a massive heart attack or a complete nervous breakdown,” said Dr. Morris Bernstein of City General Hospital in Chicago.
“I had my DNA test done last year and found out that I wasn’t really Jewish. My DNA showed that I was nearly 95% Irish and descended from a long line of Irish Catholics…especially on my maternal side This would explain my red hair and freckles, and I accept it. Unfortunately, when I called to tell my mother, she dropped dead on the spot at her condo in Boca. She didn’t even make it to the ER. Normally, I would be very sad about my mother, but now that I’m Irish, I find comfort in knowing that when I die I will be reunited in heaven with mom and with Jesus Christ. Maybe I would have been better off not knowing. Maybe I should have used DenyNA, but why hide from the truth?”
DNA testing recently revealed to Vilhelm Vanderhoeffen, a very proud German-American that his ancestral DNA was only 20% Germanic. His bargain basement DNA test revealed that he is actually 70% African-American, 20% Greek and 10% Armenian. This came as a shock to the man because he had been raised in a strict German family who ate only sausages and sauerkraut.
“My life is different now,” said Vanderhoeffen. “I bought a great book about cooking ribs and I learned a little about Malclom X from a book I saw in the library, but I am not happy about this. My father was very Aryan and my mother was a fat housewife with proper head measurements and blue eyes. She never broke a dish on purpose or sprayed wounds with Windex. How could they not know the truth? This makes no sense to me, my brothuh, but yo, this is what I gotta expect up in here…see what I’m sayin?”
For Constance Millberry and her son Chauncey, residents of Darnely Connecticut and East Hampton, NY, the results of their DenyNA test proved what they had already known.
“I think it goes without saying that everyone’s biggest fear is finding out that they might be Jewish or African, unless they’re Jewish or African, but thanks to my DenyNA test, my children and I can breath a sigh of relief. DenyNA proved that were are indeed descended exclusively from well-bred British stock in spite of the fact that a lot of people in our circle had mysteriously vanished after they received their bargain basement DNA test results.”
DenyNA is available to anyone for $1999.00. That’s nearly $2,000 more than the other tests, but isn’t it worth it?