As of 2020, more than 30 million people from all corners of the world have taken a DNA test. There are many reasons why people would take a DNA test, but some usually take it to learn more about their ethnicity.
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For Rebecca Cartellone, it was a way of being proud of her father’s Italian heritage. What was supposed to be a fun Christmas gift for her family turned into something more. The family discovered a secret that would change their life forever.
Merry Christmas!
Back in 2018, Rebecca wanted to do something sweet for her family, so she decided to get a shared Christmas present for her whole family. The present in question was a DNA testing kit to learn more about her family’s heritage.
Cartellone Family
Rebecca is Joseph (Joe) and Jennifer Cartellone’s only daughter. Actually, this wasn’t the only time Rebecca was interested in learning more about their heritage. She has expressed her interest in exploring more since she was younger.
Proud Italians
The Cartellones were proud of their Italian heritage. This ancestry mainly came from Joe’s side of the family. Their 24-year-old daughter, Rebecca, had loved looking into her ancestors and her heritage before.
Cartellone Family/Facebook
Rebecca was always curious about how Italian she was. You see, contrary to popular belief, a person’s DNA is not actually a 50/50 split between the mom and dad. This is one of the reasons why families do DNA tests together.
How DNA Kits Work
The Cartellone family had purchased their DNA kit from Ancestry.com, although most kits work the same way regardless of where they’re bought. The process is actually relatively simple, at least from the client’s end anyway.
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The company just needs the person’s DNA sample, usually their saliva. This may either be collected through a cheek swab or a spit test tube. Then, the results are forwarded to a database that records the person’s DNA and connects them to people.
Reconnection
Ancestry kits are quite well-known thanks to their power (or notoriety) for revealing new relatives… or secrets. When a person’s DNA matches with someone else’s in their database, their ancestry helps explain how they’re related.
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A lot of people have found long-lost relatives thanks to DNA tests. In some cases, DNA results look into which parts of a child come from which parent. In other unfortunate circumstances, it sometimes reveals unexpected results.
Shocking Results
When Christmas passed, the Cartellones sent their DNA kits back to the company. Then in late January, they finally got back the results. However, they never expected it would reveal something mystifying.
Jennifer Logsdon Cartellone/Facebook
According to the results, Rebecca had absolutely 0 traces of her father’s DNA. In fact, she hardly had any Italian ancestry at all. What’s worse is, the results even claimed that Joe and Rebecca were not related!
Out Of The Equation
During an interview with Good Morning America, Joe said, “When we looked at the results, what we immediately noticed was that there were no traces of Italian DNA in [Rebecca’s results] at all.”
Joe Cartellone/Facebook
“Her DNA matched my wife’s pretty closely.” Since the results seemed half right, Joe thought there must have been a slight mistake. There was no way Rebecca wasn’t his daughter. Everything just didn’t add up.
Was It Really A Mistake?
So, Joe called up the company and informed them about the slight error in their DNA results. After listening to his predicament, the employees then broke down their step-by-step process for calculating someone’s DNA.
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After Joe listening to the employees’ explanation, he believed the chances of the site making a mistake were slim. But if it wasn’t the website that made a mistake, what happened? And more importantly, who was Rebecca’s dad then?
Signs Point To IVF
The only way they could get an answer out of this was to look back to 1994 when Joe and Jennifer wanted children and tried out IVF or in vitro fertilization. This procedure works by taking the mother’s eggs and fertilizing them with the dad’s sperm.
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When a sperm successfully fertilizes an egg, it returns to the mother. This is one of the most common and well-known options for couples who struggle with infertility. With no other options left, Joe and Rebecca decided to do a paternity test.
More Questions
Just as they had suspected, Rebecca was indeed not Joe’s daughter, which only led to more unanswered questions. In the words of famous genealogist Debbie Kennet, “The DNA on its own, doesn’t give the science; you need the contextual family information as well.”
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Back in 1994, Joe and Jennifer had done IVF treatment at Christ Hospital close to their hometown of Dublin, Ohio. The physicians informed them that they would be taking samples of Joe’s sperm to fertilize Jennifer’s egg.
A Mix Up?
Because of how the DNA results turned out, Joe had a strong feeling the hospital might have mixed up the sperm samples. After all, Rebecca was not his biological daughter, and nobody had a clue who was. Unfortunately, sperm mix-ups are more common in IVF than people think.
Joe Cartellone/Facebook
Mixups are always possible considering how many sperm donations the fertility clinics house. Back in the 1980s, a certain Dr Donald Cline apparently used his own sperm in IVF treatments. Stories like these are the reason why some people don’t trust IVF.
Crushed
Joe felt crushed once he found out. During a press conference, he said, “It’s hard to explain the shock and agony when you find out that someone you love and care for—your own daughter—is not genetically related to you.”
Joe Cartellano/Facebook
“My disbelief turned quickly to shock and then ultimately to anger that this could possibly be the case.” He said the news hit their family hard. “My wife Jennifer is still in shock. She has to deal with the fact that this clinic… fertilized her eggs with a complete stranger’s sperm and placed them in her body.”
Guilt
What the clinic did was not only traumatizing for Jennifer but also illegal. But perhaps the most negatively affected person was their daughter, Rebecca. After the news broke out, she felt guilty for gifting them DNA kits in the first place.
Jennifer Logsdon Cartellone/Facebook
Joe said Rebecca felt “significant emotional distress and confusion regarding her own identity.” She also felt “profoundly disappointed” when she realized she could not bear a child with both of her parents’ genetics.
Seeking Help
Feeling distraught and troubled, the family decided to seek some legal advice. They sought help from Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane law firm to figure out how to deal with this. The lawyers were just as shocked as they were.
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“This is a massive betrayal of trust and an unthinkable break of trust,” said managing shareholder Joseph C. Peiffer. The law firm also represents other families who are suing fertility clinics for misconduct.
Legal Repercussions
Fertility clinics that make the mistake of mixing sperm donations may face grave legal repercussions. For one, Jennifer never consented to have a stranger’s sperm fertilize her egg and return inside her body.
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Another thing is that since they have no idea who the other parent is, the child might grow up with genetic diseases that parents had no clue about. For all they know, Rebecca could be at risk of certain health conditions.
Who Was Responsible For It?
What the family really wanted to find out was who Rebecca’s biological dad was. Their lawyers helped them go over the DNA results. They managed to link it to five men that Rebecca had never met in her life.
Joe Cartellone/Facebook
According to their family lawyer Adam Wolf, there was one man who “previously worked as a doctor at the Christ Hospital.” Given previous controversial stories about mixups, this discovery was just sketchy.
A Possible Sabotage
With the possibility that Rebecca’s father was part of the medical field, there is a high chance of sabotage. It is never fair for people to feel cheated and devastated, especially when they realize that their whole life was a lie. Even if it was unintentional, it is still very unethical.
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“I would strongly urge them to have their eyes wide open and understand something we did not at the time, which is that this is an industry that has a lot of issues and errors and mistakes, and even some intentional,” Joe said during a press conference.
Is Joe a Father of Any Other Biological Children?
Despite facing this mystery, the family stilled wanted to know where Joe’s genetic materials went. According to Wolf, “If you provide sperm to create an embryo and you find out that sperm was not used for your daughter, you have to wonder, where did your sperm go?”
Joe Cartellone/Facebook
And so, they have been wondering about that since. The family had a lot of questions that were waiting to be answered. Was it used to fertilize another family’s egg? They don’t know, but if so, then it’s possible Joe had other kids.
Legal Actions Against the Hospital
Wanting answers to their questions, the family finally decided to take legal action. They wanted the hospital and other involved facilities to take responsibility. They wanted to find out the truth about what happened and have justice for what was done against them.
NYPost.com
The investigation for the lawsuit focused on three facilities: Christ Hospital, the Institute for Reproductive Health, and Ovation Fertility Cincinnati. The family wanted these institutions to take responsibility and give compensation for the unfortunate event they had to go through. If one thing’s for sure, the case will not be taking the easy route.
Battery and Neglect
What happened screams breach of contract and neglect. The Cartellones had to struggle for the consequences for things they were not (and never) responsible for. On the other hand, Wolf also charged the hospital with battery.
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In the legal world, battery is defined as a physical act that causes harm to another person. In most cases, these incidents occur without consent from the victim. Well, Jennifer did not consent to having another donor’s sperm.
Institute for Reproductive Health was “Nonexistent” Back in 1994
The Institute for Reproductive Health released a statement in response to the case. According to them, the institute did not exist in the early ’90s. Therefore, they didn’t have anything to do with the accusation and the case.
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The stakeholders insisted that the fertilization took place in a different laboratory that they had no control over. Moreover, their spokesperson said, “Our physicians are not involved in the fertilization of eggs with sperm, as this process is handled by embryologists in the IVF laboratory.” They heavily denied their involvement with this case and medical malpractice.
No Ovation Center Too?!
The family wasn’t pleased with the news that they received about the Ovation Fertility Cincinnati either. During the investigation, they found out that the current facility was also nonexistent until the 2000s. Initially, Ovation Fertility Cincinnati was formerly known as the Christ Hospital’s Greater Cincinnati Institute.
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“Therefore, any action that could have occurred in The Christ Hospital’s laboratory 25 years ago is unrelated to our lab,” their representative claimed. With the statements that they have released, it has been clear that they are denying any type of involvement in this case. However, someone has to take responsibility for what has happened.
In Pursuit of the Truth
Despite all of the statements that were given by the hospital, the family lawyer still wants to know the truth. He had his doubts. He went through the names of Cartellones’ former lab director and doctor and was able to discover a possible way of uncovering the truth about the incident.
Joe Cartellone/Facebook
Both the director and the doctor who remained unnamed are now working for the Institute of Reproductive Health. This has sparked his hopes of finding out what really happened behind closed doors. Because of his discovery, it may be possible to get to the bottom of this.
No Answers Provided by the Hospital
The hospital personnel were also careful with what they say that may or may not help the investigation. News programs such as CNN, NBC, and Good Morning America wanted to have a scoop. However, the Christ Hospital Health Network rejected each request.
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To pacify the noise, the hospital only released a final statement saying that they were “evaluating the allegations surrounding events alleged to have occurred in the early 1990s.” As to what they were exactly doing and how long this was going to take, no one actually knew.
Guess What?! It’s Not Just the Cartellones.
As surprising as it seems, the Cartellones weren’t the only victims of an IVF mixup. According to their lawyers, they have represented families with similar experiences. From this statement, we can conclude that an IVF mixup is not far from reality and is totally possible.
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Just like the Cartellones, families who experienced this kind of medical malpractice are confused and disappointed. They have little to no clue about where they came from and who they really are. “One of the things we really want to find out through our lawsuit is what happened,” said Wolf. “Right now, we have no idea.”
Joining Support Groups
Realizing that your whole life was somehow based on a lie and not knowing who you really are is quite overwhelming. Luckily, there are support groups available that help people like Rebecca cope with her situation.
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The events were really traumatizing for Rebecca and the other children who experienced this unfortunate incident. Last 2017, a Facebook group named NPE Friends was launched. NPE or “Not Parents Expected” is a term used to describe people who found out that they were not totally related to their parents.
Family Members That Remain Unknown
Like any other families who went through this mishap, the Cartellones are bothered by the thought of unknown families somewhere. Rebecca yearns to know whether she has brothers and sisters. She also wants to know about her grandparents.
Jennifer Logsdon Cartellone/Facebook
On the other hand, Joe also wonders if he has other children. This was a truly traumatizing experience, and now the Cartellones are broken into tiny little pieces, and now they have to help each other put the pieces together as a family.
Hope for Tomorrow
Being in this situation and going through what they went through is never a walk in the park. They were put into a hard situation wherein they could never undo what was done in the past. In order to help other families and raise awareness about the issue, Joe Cartellone held a press conference.
ABC News
He spoke with determination and hope. “These clinics need to be held accountable and they need to suffer real consequences for their actions,” he asserted. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that this doesn’t happen again to anyone else.”
IVF Advice
In order to raise more awareness about the fertility industry, Joe aims to warn couples who are considering IVF treatments. While there are successful stories, there are also stories that don’t have a happy ending.
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From someone who found out about it years later, he suggested that couples should conduct DNA testing on the embryo before implanting it to the mother. It would also be beneficial for couples to research more information about IVF and not to put blind trust in the process itself.