#242 Misattributed Paternity with Richard Wenzel

In 2020, a direct-to-consumer DNA test revealed that our guest Richard Wenzel's father was not his genetic father. Moreover, evidence indicates that his conception resulted from a sexual assault of his mother and that his pediatrician (who was also his mother's obstetrician) helped conceal this crime; unfortunately, all involved individuals are deceased. Since that troubling discovery, Richard has dedicated his efforts towards increasing education and awareness among medical professionals about the harms of false genetic narratives, identifying opportunities to improve the care provided to children/adults incurring a false narrative, and urging for research. 

Richard Wenzel, Pharm.D., CPPS, is an accomplished clinician, researcher, educator, lecturer, and mentor in the profession of pharmacy, whose expertise includes hospital practices, headache disorders, and patient safety, as well as the evolving realm of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. He has authored or co-author approximately 50 peer-reviewed publications in medical and pharmacy journals including Phase III and post hoc medication research, systematic literature reviews, clinical narratives, and opinion piece articles.He has also given more than 100 presentations at national, state, and local-level medical professionals’ (pharmacist, physician, physician assistant, nursing) meetings as well as lectures at U.S. and international Colleges of Pharmacy. Richard is a recipient of the American Pharmacists Association’s "One-to-One Patient Counseling Award" and is a two-time nominee for the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy "Master Preceptor" award and a university’s "Preceptor of the Year" recipient, having successfully provided clinical rotation site education to more than 600 pharmacy students!

On This Episode We Discuss:

• Richard’s personal journey of discovering his misattributed paternity

• How this discovery has affected his perception of his relationship with his mother and childhood experiences

• Wrestling with the discovery of misattributed paternity when the parents are deceased

• Guidelines that healthcare providers follow regarding the disclosure of misattributed parentage

• Benefits and harms that need to be considered when deciding whether to disclose misattributed parentage

• How the discovery of misattributed parentage can impact individuals, particularly children, and their sense of identity

• Available support and resources for individuals who have discovered misattributed parentage, and what more needs to be done to assist them

• Advice for others who are in the midst of a not-parent-expected discovery and for healthcare providers on the other side of this

Richard Wenzel’s Resources

• Shepard, A., Diamond, D., Willard, L., Staples, J., Martin, K., & Witherspoon, N. (2022). Discovering Misattributed Paternity After DNA Testing and its Impact on Psychological Well-Being and Identity Formation. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 6(3), 189-211. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/12611

• Avni C, Sinai D, Blasbalg U, Toren P. Discovering your presumed father is not your biological father: Psychiatric ramifications of independently uncovered non-paternity events resulting from direct-to-consumer DNA testing. Psychiatry Res 2023;323:115142. 

• Lawton B L, Pyott L C, Deyerin K R,  Foeman A K. Experiences of Misattributed Parentage Communities: Impacts of Discovering New Familial Kinships. Journal of Family History 2023: epub ahead of print; doi.org/10.1177/03631990231156176.  

• Grethel, M., Lewis, J., Freeman, R., & Stone, C. (2022). Discovery of unexpected paternity after direct-to-consumer DNA testing and its impact on identity. Family Relations, 1– 17. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12752

• Klugman-Rabb, Jodi, "A Qualitative Study on the Effect of Misattributed Parentage Experiences" (2023). Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship. 354.
  https://scholar.dominican.edu/all-faculty/354

• Family Secrets: Exploring unexpected paternity through direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry tests.  Gina Daniel, Masters Thesis, https://millersville.tind.io/record/6411/files/Gina%20Daniel.pdf

• American Medical Association Code on Ethics of Collecting Family History

• American Academy of Pediatrics’ Article on the Pediatrician’s Role on Patient and Family Centered Care 

• American Academy of Pediatrics “Value of Family Medical History and adoption as a barrier to accurate history”

• Jodi Girard’s Narrative 

• Kara Rubenstein Narrative 

• Semikhodskii A, Makarova T, Sutyagina D. Paternity pseudo-exclusion caused by tetragametic chimerism in a gestational surrogacy case. Eur J Med Genet. 2023 Jun 3;66(8):104799. doi: 10.1016/j.ejmg.2023.104799

• Sheets KM, Baird ML, Heinig J, Davis D, Sabatini M, Starr DB. A case of chimerism-induced paternity confusion: what ART practitioners can do to prevent future calamity for families. J Assist Reprod Genet. 2018 Feb;35(2):345-352. doi: 10.1007/s10815-017-1064-6.

• American Society of Human Genetics Position Statement and Article

• American Society for Reproductive Medicine Position Statement

• American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics Position Statement 

• Buying my existence. Just $49, free shipping included. By Richard Wenzel

• To be or not to be (honest): The persistent problem of misattributed paternity By Laura Hercher

• Li D, Liao C. Incidental discovery of nonpaternity during prenatal testing of genetic disease. Fetal Diagn Ther 2008;24:39-41.  “that pleases those who do not wish to disclose [MP] yet accurately states the laboratory’s results for legal purposes”

• Organizations include donordeceived.org and womenagainstpaternityfraud.org.

We close out Pride month on June 30th with our next new episode “Navigating Barriers in LGBTQIA+ Genetic Care”, this is an episode drop from the PhenoTips Speaker Series, also hosted by Kira Dineen. New episodes are released every Friday. In the meantime, you can binge over 240 other episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, streaming on the website, or any other podcast player by searching, “DNA Today”. Episodes since 2021 are also recorded with video which you can watch on our YouTube channel.  

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