Have you ever wondered about the hidden stories behind assisted reproductive technology?

Today on Family Twist, we delve into the fascinating and often secret world of artificial insemination and infertility through the eyes of Peter J. Boni, author of the book Uprooted. Peter's journey of discovery after learning he was donor-conceived at 49 intertwines personal narrative with the broader history of reproductive technologies, revealing the complex interplay of science, ethics, and personal identity.

Listeners will gain:

• Insights into the historical and ethical complexities of assisted reproductive technology.
• An understanding of the personal impacts of discovering one's origins later in life.
• Strategies for navigating the emotional terrain of uncovering family secrets through DNA testing.

Explore this profound topic and uncover how history, science, and personal stories intersect in the realm of human conception. Tune in to this episode for a captivating look at the truths that define and sometimes disrupt our sense of self.

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This is Family Twist, a podcast about astonishing adoption stories and finding family via DNA magic. I'm Kendall. And I'm Corey. And we've been inseparable partners in life since 03, 04, 05, also known as March 4th, 2005. In January 2018, our found family journey took us 3000 miles from the San Francisco Bay Area to New England, where we now live near my biological father, two half siblings and their families.

We love being near them all and the adventure continues. Welcome back to Family Twist. Our guest today is Peter J. Bonney, author of the book Uprooted. Kendall and I both read and really enjoyed your book, Peter. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Corey. Happy to be here. I really like how you mix your personal history with semi -adoption and the history of artificial insemination and infertility, which includes ties to BF Skinner. I thought that was really cool as well.

for the life of me find any records or my mother gave me incorrect clues to track my genealogy, my health history, and whether or not I had siblings as an only child. My only recourse was to do a deep dive of research into the assisted reproductive technology that enabled my conception to begin with. And I went.

The second wave was after I had learned that I was not Northern Italian. I was English, French, and a sliver of Scandinavian on my paternal side. And I had exposed some of what I learned to a friend of mine. And he said, you know, Pete, I used to breed Rottweilers and the breeding of puppies has greater regulation, greater regulatory oversight than the conception of human beings.

So when I heard that, I thought, you know, this could be a pretty thought provoking book. And I wanted to write the history and evolution of assisted reproductive technology and all of its secrets from the lens of somebody like me who was donor conceived, going through all of that identity trauma of late discovery. I discovered it at age 49 and it took until age 71 to answer all of my questions. 22 years of in -depth research. And prior to that, you were carrying

a lot of emotional baggage already from the death of your father and wondering if the things that ailed him would ultimately end up ailing you, you know, as part of genetics. Very definitely. Was it Muhammad Ali that said something like, it's not the marathon that wears you down, it's the stone in your shoe? Yeah. And I really had three stones in my shoe. I never grieved properly for the death of my dad. He suffered from bouts of depression. As a younger man, he could shake that off.

But as he aged, he could no longer shake it off. The last four years of his life, he was in and out of hospitals. His old school Italian family treated this somewhat shamefully. Let's keep it quiet. Let's not let that spill over to other members of the family, not on us. So I grew up feeling somewhat flawed and inadequate as a result of their treating his illness that way. And perhaps that might carry over to me too. So I was concerned.

in that regard. And I never grieve properly for my dad to begin with after he took his own life when I was 16. You know, suicide creates a wound that never heals. So that was one big stone in my shoe. A second stone was the lingering PTSD from on the ground service in Vietnam as a special operations infantry team leader. And there's identity trauma was the third stone in my shoe.

And I sought therapy for the identity trauma. And the therapist told me, son, you hit a home run. You hit a trifecta, as a matter of fact, because you've got three different things going on at the same time. So to deal with one effectively, I really had to deal with all three. And at that time as well, when I learned in 1995, I was going through a marital crisis on top of that. So I've never worked so hard in my life with a therapist as I did then. I'm just remembering aspects of the book as you.

talk about it now and if you really feel for you and when I was reading about the issues you were having at the time with your wife like oh boy and then to go on this journey it's like man I hope they make it I hope I'm not spoiling anything you made it so congratulations. Well Susan and I just celebrated our 54th wedding anniversary so congratulations. That's awesome. It was a lot easier for me than it was for her.

So as you mentioned, your friend talking about the dog breeding, there really was a lot of shadiness and secrecy around infertility and those early days of artificial insemination. What were some of the things that really shocked you as you were doing your research? Well, I talk about the 10 secrets of assisted reproductive technology. It goes back to very beginning, right through to the present day. I mean, secret number one is there was a character.

Well, his half sister discarded that and the half sister happened to have been Queen Isabella. She made her own history. But it was further documented actually in the 18th century by a physician of English royalty. So that goes back to 1790. In 1866, there were a variety of human experimentations on artificial insemination, documented by a gentleman named

There was an article in Time Magazine, and it was reviewing the status of a donor -conceived child, according to the Superior Court in Cook County, Illinois, where a husband was granted a divorce on the grounds of adultery because his wife had a child through artificial insemination by donor. The child was declared illegitimate. Now, the title of that article was very telling. Artificial bastards with a question mark.

Very telling. So my parents at that time took a bold move and used that shroud of secrecy and the practice standards that were established to enable me to be conceived and to be born legitimately with my father's name on my birth certificate. They used an obstetrician that had no idea that I was donor conceived. So he had all the ability to...

conscious free sign the fact that my father was in fact my biological father. Sure. So my birth certificate was a hoax. You know, it was a fabrication. It was not right lie. It was a fraud. I began to think gosh, you know, my fraud.

view of donor insemination requiring a eugenics approach with the goal of creating a child with all of the desired perfect characteristics. I read that and I said to my wife, what's your problem with me? I'm perfect. I was bred to be perfect. But she didn't know that. The practice in the sixties, actually, there was a Nobel prize winning geneticist named Herman Mueller. He advocated for a seminal Fort Knox. And from that,

came a initial sperm bank that was housed by all Nobel Prize laureates. That didn't last. The Nobel Prize winner was older by the time he gained that kind of recognition and his sperm was a little too old and weak to do the job. And the Nobel Prize winners weren't the most handsome dudes in the world either. So the banks themselves thrived, even though that particular practice did not. Secret number seven.

And that kind of growth and that size, I thought that JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs could have an interest in that kind of a business. No kidding. And there's absence of any real kind of regulation here that's enabling the conception of dozens or even a hundred or more unknowing offspring from the same donor. So can you imagine learning you have a hundred siblings? Right. It's, I mean, it's just unbelievable.

So the practice has actually gone off the rails. Now with the social media, you can actually find a sperm donor on Craigslist. Can you imagine finding a sperm donor? And there are specialty websites that look like match .com or even Etsy where you can customize what it is you're looking for. And you can buy insemination kits on amazon .com. So this whole thing has gone off the rails in wild west fashion with zero regulation. Secret number eight.

is that 21st century science has really obsoleted assisted reproductive technologies practices that are still operating in the 20th century. And the science has advanced exponentially in the last three decades, but laws are still operating in the 20th century. So the old promise though of anonymity of a gamut donor,

their family tree tools. And over the course of that five years with venture capital financing and a lot of consumer education and marketing, they had a customer base that actually surpassed the industry leader, 23andMe. So I went off and I spit into the ancestry .com vile. Now, ancestry .com cost me $99. Nine years prior,

How much do you think I paid for the first test? It was about a thousand dollars, I believe. Yeah, $999. In technology, just like you have a little phone, that's basically the power of a mainframe in your hand. Well, the mainframe used to kind of cost a million dollars. Now the power of this is a thousand dollars. The math still works out the same, although the numbers are a little bigger. So with ancestry .com, I was able.

with that larger customer base to answer all of my questions. I found the source of my seed. I knew my genealogy. I knew my health history. And I found a handful of siblings. What I don't know, the question that is still there, kind of like a hangnail, it just eats at me. And that is how many siblings do I have really? Did I ever date a sibling? Did my children ever date an offspring of my sibling?

And what about my grandchildren? That's a little bit troubling. Yeah. The ninth secret of assisted reproductive technology is that the fertility rates in the Western Hemisphere over the last 40 years have declined by a whopping 50 -50 % combination of a toxic environment and people just waiting longer to conceive.

label bastard is no longer there. The Uniform Parentage Act has really taken care of that. And the final secret that really captured me is that the next red Frankenstein has really yet to be nicknamed. Here we have in Monash University, a very fine reproductive technology university in Australia. Just last year, they were enabled to create a model embryo.

using human skin, cellular tissue. So without some ethics, you've got the cloning of sheep and cocker spaniels on the farm, but without the ability to have some ethics around this thing, the next Red Frankenstein is yet to be nicknamed. Now that's a long answer for your question. Did I find anything that surprised me? All 10 of those things really surprised me. We'll bounce back to some of your answers, but I love that your daughter was your partner.

in this research for this book. What was that bonding experience like with Tracy? If you guys working on this long journey together? Yeah, well really we had 22 years bonding on this. My son was a factor as well, but he was in California. I was in the East Coast and my daughter was still in the East Coast. So from a timing and availability standpoint, Tracy really took the lead in helping me with the research. She is a forensic researcher.

I told her she should put up a shingle, Tracy forensic research, because she did a great service for me in finding some things that I never could have found on my own, especially in the second phase of my research, which was all internet based. During this journey, I think, and maybe I'm reading between the lines a little bit, but I think Tracy kind of helped you discover your parents a little bit. I think you had sort of mixed feelings about different aspects of your parentage, but.

I'll call you back in. I love thinking about that there were people like your grandmother out there helping women way back when.

It's such a small world, we find out there are so many similarities with each and every person that we talk to. So very cool that you both did the Ancestry thing the same year. Yeah. You know, in February, in my world now, in the Donor Conceived community, they joke, half -jokingly, that February is new sibling season.

2 million people sign up for Black Friday sales down now to $49 and recreationally just doing their DNA to find Uncle Louie or what have you. And many of them are finding that they are misattributed. Now, misattributed was a word I never heard of until I started researching this. It means that your DNA and your birth certificate just don't line up. Something's askew with one or both parents. And the experts, in quotes, the experts believe that some 2 % to 4 % of us.

are misattributed for one reason or another. It could be a extramarital affair. It could be a closed adoption. It could be a one night stand or a sexual assault. Maybe you're switched at birth or perhaps Aunt Martha raised you. You thought she was a mom, but really cousin Mary was mom. That happens in families today. Or like me, you are a donor conceived through an anonymous donor. Some experts believe that number is a little lower.

Some make a great cogent case that it's 10 % or even 15 % or higher, but they'll corral around the two to 4 % number as a talking point. Using my own high school class of a hundred people, using that two to 4 % number, that would say that two to four of them are misattributable. I know I'm one of them. I know of two others that came to me and said, Pete, you have some expertise now in DNA. We're having some trouble understanding our results. Can you help us out? Well,

That's three and they know of one other. So that 4 % is kind of in my high school class already validated. Now you have two parents, right? You have how many grandparents? Four. How many great grandparents? Eight. And it becomes exponential. It's geometric in proportion. So using that two to 4 % number, interestingly enough, my entire high school graduating class of 100...

they're misattributed to somebody in their family tree up to their third to sixth great -grandparent. So a lot of stories of family lore in February are going to create some questions, but there's no disclaimer on the ancestry .com or 23andMe box saying you might have a surprise that's traumatic. Yeah, absolutely. We've definitely...

run into that in our situation and we've run into that as we've been doing this podcast and talking to other folks. And really part of the reason why we're doing this is just, you know, we don't have all the answers. Um, we're learning more every day and if we can do a little bit to help the else on this journey, feel a little bit better about their decision to do it, to do an ancestry test, but then discover that, you know, nobody wants to be found or that they're just, they're having some trauma. You know, we're, we're hoping that this podcast kind of helps them a little.

Well, genealogical bewilderment was a term innovated in the sixties by a pair of psychologists that were studying adoptees. And some of them had issues with a sense of belonging. Well, there's not a lot of difference between being adopted and semi -adopted in my case. And I can tell you, I was raging, raging with genealogical bewilderment. I wanted to know my genealogy. If I wasn't Northern Italian, what was I? I wanted to know my health history.

My health history is important. If it weren't important, why would a doctor ask every time I go in what my health history is? What my parents' health history and what my grandparents were. And as an only child, I wanted to know that I have any siblings. That I date a sibling. Yeah. Well, I think your sense of humor definitely shines through in the book. How did that help you through this journey? Because there's a lot of trauma here. And...

Sometimes we have to lean on humor to get us through things. Well, I learned in war that humor diffuses anxiety and there's plenty of anxiety in combat. And humor can be pretty dark at times, but it carried me through. So there it is. Now, you definitely were very upset with finding out so many years after your birth, what really happened. Are you at peace with your parents now? And if so, did the journey of this book help you get there?

Well, the journey in my book did help me get there, Corey. That was very insightful to mention that. But I think forgiveness is key and I really forgave my parents for lying to me. It was better understood when I saw the history and the articles and so forth. I understood. Today, all of the research, all of the research will state to any parent that for the benefit of the child,

They should know their genealogy and their method of conception right up front. Let it be part of their woodwork. That's where the adjustment issue doesn't happen. Like me from having that late discovery identity trauma and that genealogical bewilderment to go with that. It's tough. It makes me think about, I can't be on Kendall's head, but just some of the things that he's gone through since our own discovery and then.

continues to feel about it because there hasn't necessarily been the kind of results or closure in all, you know, areas that he's hoped for. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to me. I think I could relate to your rage in that, that I've always known I was adopted. I don't ever remember not knowing. And I thanked my parents often.

for not keeping me in the dark. And not that they had any details about my biology, they didn't, but they were always honest with me. And to Corey's second point, it's been pretty difficult to not have a relationship currently with my birth mother who doesn't, apparently doesn't want to. So that's fine. It's still worth finding everybody else. Well, for me, I actually have.

relationships now with a couple of siblings and I found I'm one of six, but I don't know how many I have really. I just discovered that I'm one of six right now. Some of them don't want to know. Some of them don't want to know me and a couple of them do. Well, you know, the bonus for me was a nice friendship with a couple of siblings. I never met my donor. He had passed before I had discovered this, but I didn't have any fantasy about.

meeting the source of my seed. I really wanted to know my genealogy and my health history. And I wanted to make certain that I or my children or my grandchildren didn't date a close relative. Yeah. Well, one of my favorite parts of the book is the discovery of what initially you thought was your cousin, Roxy, who turns out to be your sister. And it was pretty key in unlocking this whole thing. Yeah. Well, I go over that in almost like a mystery writer.

in the book and as opposed to answering your questions, I'll ask people to read that book for themselves and get a sense. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It was definitely a heartwarming part of the book. Yeah. Thanks for that Corey. You know, the science moves so rapidly. My venture capital prediction in the next decade is that you'll have in the pharmacies, you'll have kiosks, DNA kiosks, back to personalized medicine. That'll be the primary.

marketplace for this. Once it's saturated, that folks are fine now, they know that they're 17 % Irish and 23 % something else. I can envision a kiosk in a pharmacy, you just spit in the vial, put in your credit card, get an instant readout as to which vitamins that are specific to the protein content in your body you should take and which ones would give you no benefit. But with that,

There's going to be secrets that will come out. I can see two brothers both doing this, looking at the results and dialing up their cell phone and saying, mom, are you home? Is dad home? We need to talk. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Without, again, not giving away too much of the mystery, being what you thought of as an only child for almost all of your life, how has becoming a sibling enriched it?

Well, you know, it's a home run. I have great friendships with these folks and we have a lot in common and both physically as well as many of our habits are similar. A little story. One sister, this meets who her two sons separately. One was very embracing, you know, uncle Pete immediately. The other one, very standoffish, friendly, but standoffish. And when his mother wasn't in the room, he said to me, don't expect me to treat you like an uncle or anything.

I said, that's okay, you know, you don't have to treat me like an uncle. Consider me a really close friend to your mom and we have some unique things in common. He said, well, I can do that. I can do that. So the following year, maybe two years later, she brought her both kids to my house. They were passing through and I invited them for lunch. And the one who was standoffish had a Zoom call he needed to make. And I sent him upstairs and he was talking to his colleagues on Zoom.

And I turned the camera around to show them the water view that I have in my house and on Cape Cod. Oh my gosh. Where are you? And he said, well, I'm visiting my uncle. So it takes a while. It does. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, there's another coincidence. Kendall's uncle had a beautiful place on Cape Cod until he saw last year, which we love to visit because that water view is hard to beat. So you touched on something a few minutes ago.

And I'm going to go back to the very beginning of your book because it opens with a quote from Buddha. And I'd like to close the episode with it because it's something that we've definitely referenced too. Things that cannot be long hidden. The sun, the moon, and the truth. And the truth. Something that we've said since day one of this podcast, DNA doesn't lie. And you mentioned secrets out there, but the secrets are out. And as you said, a lot more secrets will be coming out in February. But I thought it was a very poignant.

quote to choose for the book? Well, I'm using this book now as an advocacy vehicle. My goals for the book really were three. I'm all for science, by the way, to enable wanting people to have a family. I would just like the practice to be considerate of the people that the science enables to be conceived. People like me, I'd like to impact the laws so that there's more teeth.

to the guidance as opposed to just guidance that doesn't really matter because banks don't follow the guidance anyway. And recognizing there's a large group of people that are misattributed out there, maybe speak to the needs and the emotional wellbeing of all misattributed people that have the same reaction as I did when I learned in traumatic fashion that I wasn't what I thought I was.

So I'm promoting a donor conceived Bill of Rights, puts 21st century technology, acknowledges that and tries to impact the practice so that it is inclusive of 21st century technology. The first one is to eliminate donor anonymity, which DNA has done de facto anyway, to require donor genetic testing and a released health history, to limit the number of offspring per donor so we don't have 100 or more.

siblings from the same donor with nobody's knowledge, to have a sibling registry in place so that siblings know of one another, some upfront donor and recipient counseling regarding the needs of the donor -conceived people. Some organizations offer that, but it's elective. It's not mandatory, not required. And then how about some defined legal consequences for blatant fertility fraud, whether it be somebody lying to, for instance, a sperm bank.

that they have a PhD and speak five languages, but really they're a convicted felon and a schizophrenic that have 36 offspring with issues. That's a real case by the way. Oh boy. Or some legal consequence to any doctor who's not using a gamut that was selected by the parent. I'll call that a donor conceived bill of rights. I like it. That's great. Well, again, we both love the book and I think we're going to continue to share it with folks because whether you love mystery, science,

History, family history. I mean, there's definitely something in there for everybody. It was a page turner. Yeah. Yeah. Kudos to you for writing it and sharing your journey. Well, you can see it on my website, www .peterjbonnie .com. And that gives you links to Amazon and a number of other places where you can get the book as well. Wonderful. Very good. Well, Peter, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story with us.

And good luck in the future and getting to know your friends and your family more. I always say that there's one thing you can never have enough of and that's friends. So even if, as you discover more family members and they become friends, then wonderful. The more the merrier. Well, thanks, Corey. Thanks, Kendall. You're welcome. All right. Take care. Kendall, Kendall, you'll find that as you find more and more DNA connections in your database, some folks are open and some are not. Yep.

And it's on them, it's not on you. Right. Right. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. I can only be open and, you know, receptive and hope for the best. Well, there are some folks that are threatened by this and no circle wagons. Yep. Yep. They'll come around. Very true. We're hoping. We're hoping. Yeah. Excellent. Family Twist features original music from Cosmic Afterthoughts.

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