Paternity quest raises fatherhood questions

• By GREG LANGLEY
• Books editor
• Published: Jun 21, 2009

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GO ASK YOUR FATHER

By Lennard J. Davis

Bantam, $25

 

If you suddenly found out your father wasn’t really your father, that wouldn’t be so unusual. It happens all the time. If you also found out that your biological father was another member of your family, your uncle say, that wouldn’t be rare either. But if you found out your uncle had contributed the sperm that had been used to artificially inseminate your mother, that would probably be quite rare.

It’d throw you for a loop. That’s what happened to Davis after his father Morris’ death (his mother Eva had been dead for a long time). The person who revealed this was the sperm donor: his uncle Abie. He told him in 1989.

“Born in 1949, I was the son of Morris and Eva, and I had grown up in the Bronx with my brother, Gerald. Aside from the fact that my parents were both deaf and we spoke sign language at home, ours was a typical, ordinary family. I felt sure I understood the basic contours of my life as well as anyone else did,” Davis writes.

All of a sudden everything he thought he knew about his family came into question.

“Whose movie was I in?” he wondered. He stewed over the matter for years, at first deciding it didn’t matter — “Morris was my father. He taught me about life, and my experiences of his deafness in the hearing world shaped my sense of justice and perseverance. His artistic and athletic abilities gave me a direction for my own similar impulses.”

That noble analysis didn’t satisfy Davis long. He really wanted to know the truth, so in 2004, he writes, “I decided to find out what I could, and to tell my story — whatever it was — in book form, taking it public.”

So a book project was born. Davis spent wads of money and time in his quest. Hoping to answer the question of his paternity, he turned to science. He would try to match DNA. His father was dead, but it turned out there was a “paraffin block,” a section of tissue preserved at a hospital where Morris Davis once had surgery.

With the help of his brother, Davis was able to get some “slices” of the block sent to Dr. Wayne Grody of the UCLA Medical Center. After some false starts, Grody was able to get useable DNA from the 1979 tissue sample. It could be compared with DNA from Davis’ blood.  Davis is a professor of English, disability studies and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He writes with a powerful, clear voice filled with insight, but he is at his best when describing the technical processes of medicine.

Davis explains the DNA extraction process as a technician named Dawn works: “Dawn explains that she uses a system called Puregene to remove the DNA. This involves introducing various chemicals into the blood sample to dissolve the proteins while preserving the DNA, which is precipitated out. The first step is to lyse cells — that is, to break their cell walls and thus free the cell’s contents — because DNA is trapped within the cells’ nucleus. Various other chemicals stabilize the DNA and digest the RNA. Then the unwanted proteins are removed along with other contaminants by salt precipitation. Finally, the DNA is precipitated out by using alcohol, and a stabilizer is added to preserve the DNA.”