What happens when you grow up not knowing your family medical history?
A 26-year-old woman shares her struggle with accessing her biological family's medical history after being adopted as an infant. The process of obtaining these records from local authorities proved to be traumatic and bureaucratically difficult.
Why it matters
This story highlights the critical importance of genetic health data for adoptees and the systemic failures in how sensitive personal records are handled by government agencies.
Share Save Add as preferred on Google Sophia Watkins Aaliyah: "Every time you go to the GP when they ask for family history, you have to say you don't know" When Aaliyah found a lump in her breast, she was anxious to find out if she had inherited an increased risk of cancer.
But because she had been removed from her biological parents at the age of seven months and later adopted, she had no way of accessing her family medical history.
"Not knowing anything about yourself genetically is terrifying," says the 26-year-old, "you can't even begin to imagine it."
The lump turned out to be non-cancerous, but it was one of many occasions when she found herself unable to answer questions about her biological family's health.
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