Privacy Of Results Information

Why the concern over privacy of results?

Aside from the many liability issues, there is always the possibility of the Participant receiving test results that he would not want publicized. It is possible that DNA testing might show the Participant as an "un-related" (i.e., a non-blood) Bland, due to a non-parental event.

There are several types of non-paternal events. For example,
    1. a child may be adopted and given the name Bland
    2. a man may take the name Bland if he marries a Bland daughter
    3. a Bland man may marry a pregnant woman whose husband has died
    4. a couple, where the wife is the Bland, may choose to give their children the Bland name
    5. a clerical error in recording personal data may assign the name Bland to the wrong person, or
    6. a pregnancy gained outside of marriage, and so on.

It should be stressed that adoptions were quite common in every age. Parents died of disease or by war and a relative then assumed responsibility for the orphaned children, raising them with the foster parents name. Also, children of daughters having a child out-of-wedlock are frequently raised by the girl's parents with the child taking the surname of the grandparents.

Understandably, a Participant may not want others to see a result indicating a “non-paternal event,” although the Participant is a legal BLAND. However, it should be noted that due to the small sample size currently available, one could get a DNA result suggesting a “non-paternal event,” and still be of the original BLAND bloodline. For instance, twenty people are tested with results showing that 19 are very similar, but the last is clearly different. It could turn out that the 19 descend from the same person 300 years ago, and this person was an adopted BLAND, while the other is of the original bloodline going back 800 years. When questionable results come back from the lab, the BHF Project Coordinator, as well as the FTDNA staff, is available to help interpret the Participant’s DNA.