Thread: This is serious
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:02 PM   #40 (permalink)
flstf
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I agree that finding out should not radically change your relationship with your son and I'm not so sure the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is a good one. There may be good medical reasons to know who or who isn't your biological parent as pointed out in the following clip from the previously mentioned article in Men's Health magazine.

Quote:
"If the father asked me point-blank, 'Is this my son, my biological son? Can you tell by the tests?' I would have to tell him the truth," says Mikel Prieto, M.D., a kidney-transplant surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "Would I volunteer that information if it did not come up in the conversation, and did not affect what we were going to do? Probably I wouldn't."

Just 6 months after making this statement, Dr. Prieto said he had changed his mind. "Now, as a general rule, our group favors full disclosure of paternity issues."

Genuine or not, it's an ethical 180 that more doctors need to make, especially when you factor in the potential medical consequences of staying silent. If a child is born with a genetic disorder, like cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy, the father may end up mistakenly believing he carries the gene for that disorder. If that father has siblings, this misinformation could affect their decision to have children. Children, on the other hand, may grow up not knowing they carry a high genetic risk of a particular disease, such as depression, diabetes, or cancer. These days, with the growing role that genetics plays in our health outlook, knowing the identity of your biological father can be as important as knowing your blood type. One day it might save your life.
http://men.msn.com/articlemh.aspx?cp...4725722&page=1
You should be able to judge if your son is mature enough to handle the truth with your reassurance that it will not change how you feel. Finding out on his own may cause more problems than you discussing it now with him.

That same artcle pointed out there there are approximately one million fathers unknowingly raising another man's child in 2005 or about 4% of the total. (Off the subject) I wonder about those who trace their family trees and the chances that they wind up tracing geneology totally unrelated to them.
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