[Pamela Swan]

Thank you all for your posts, this is a nice place to come at the start of what I think may be a long and difficult process.

Following your advice I found the name of the attending physician on the birth certificate, and entered it in a few search engines along with the name of the hospital and state, but found nothing. In any event, if he were old enough to be an attending M.D. in a delivery ward in 1959 I suspect he is no longer living now.

I don't know this forum well enough to know how much information is useful or appropriate to share about my situation, but I do have a follow-up question about another question that you guys have probably dealt with 1,000 times from new folks like me...

I just found a company called GeneTree that offers a home DNA kit-test to exclude paternity or maternity within 99%. Is this a scam? Is it even legal to test someone's DNA for these purposes without their knowledge or consent?

If I went into my parent's home and got samples of their hair with follicles, or saliva from toothbrushes, or whatever, and sent it in to this company, would the results be reliable?

I don't care if they're legally defensible results, this has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance, or legality in any way. These dear people are absolutely my Mother and Father, and I would never think otherwise even if I found other relatives to whom I was related genetically.

I'm willing to obtain biosamples without their knowledge if it could help me investigate my own biological identity without hurting them emotionally. But I'm not willing to be bilked by charlatans who want to offer bogus information to desperate people that is not even sound enough to hold up in a court of law.

Does anyone have advice about this or any other company who offers DNA testing for maternity/paternity? I know that one or possibly both of my parents (and they are my parents) are not my biological relatives.

Knowing that neither of them are related to me would be an advantage, because that would mean I could potentially search for a situation in which they adopted me outright. If it's just an issue of paternity, I would probably drop the search since this would be simply a matter of a situation in my Mother's past which she has worked hard to keep private.

I'd like to know which is true, if I can.

Advice?

thanks again,
Pam