Remember how I asked a question in class about are researchers allowed to run paternity tests on participants ?
Would researchers tell participants if the research found participants’ family history differs from differences than what the participants believe to be true?
This questions actually stem from a thought I had earlier in my academic career in which I thought how cool it would be to study my maternal family.
My maternal family consists 2 males, 4 consecutive females( my mom is the last of them), 2 younger males.
I wondered is it by chance that all my aunts+ my mom had hyperthyroidism. I believe at least one of my uncles had hyperthyroidism as well. Unfortunately one of my uncles died so the sample won’t exactly be complete. My maternal grandpa died of possibly old age at 95 in 2001/2002. My maternal grandma probably died in 1973 of some really aggressive brain tumor. My younger self thought it would be good idea to sample everyone and just test everyone because my grandparents are not live, we wouldn’t know if there are paternity “accidents” (not true). Around my 2nd year of university, I was told by my family doctor hyperthyroidism is not heritable( I have not looked into that). However, now that I’m more exposed to clinical research. I do not think I want to be the one to conduct any studies on my maternal family. I wouldn’t want to know if any of my cousins were not conceived by their father. I definitely won’t be able to not test the family tree, as Pam mentioned 2% of the people do not have the paternity they think they have. I counted the number of people in my maternal family( that I rememeber) and it was 28. 2% pf 28 is 0.56( It rounds up to 1). Let that sink in for 1 second…
You may think “wow! Rosalie’s family history is interesting”. I haven’t started to talk about my paternal family.
My dad has 12 siblings, 2 are half siblings. I think I won’t be interested in conducting any studies on my paternal family, while many interesting heritable traits are present among my aunts and uncles.
This has been an interesting thought journey though. It is quite amazing to remember what I thought back then and compare to what I think now.