Yesterday, I visited a medical specialist for a routine visit. Like every office of doctors and dental professionals I have seen for well over three decades, this office asked for background about my medical history. Such information can be helpful as shown by nearly all peer-reviewed science to offer information to help patients receive appropriate and responsible health care.
For the majority of American adoptees, however, this simple process can be insulting and demeaning. It is another reminder how laws in most states deny potentially life-saving information to them because they are adopted. No other group in the United States is denied this critical health information based on status of birth alone. I devote a chapter to practice and problem in my forthcoming book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are (Chapter 8: Who Am I?).
The National Institutes of Health highlights why every person needs to know their family history–it can be a matter of life and death with cancer.
Health professionals more than any other group are aware of the role genetics and family history play in determining a patient’s likelihood for disease, health problems, and risks from illness. I wrote at length about his in my post from March 20, 2016, when I was advocating to get my original birth certificate from the State of Michigan (I won that battle three months later). I noted, “Adoptees like all other Americans should by legal right be entitled to this potentially life-saving information. The National Institutes for Health reports there are more than 6,000 genetic and rare diseases. These afflict more than 25 million Americans, and about 30 percent of early deaths can be linked to genetic causes.”
Yet there is almost no support from anyone in all of the health professions or groups like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with the rare exception of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has taken a public stand advocating for this at the national policy level as a matter of science and public health. (Note, this group also was among many health experts who advocated in 1960 for adoption as a social-engineering policy decision that relinquished hundreds of thousands of infants–a little-known and controversial position I explore at length in my forthcoming book [Chapter 2: The Most Suitable Plan]).
To my surprise, the office I visited did ask if I was adopted or if I did not have access to my family medical history. I was astounded. This was the first time I have ever seen any health facility acknowledge adoptees and that adoptees may not legally have access to their family health history as a matter of legal discrimination denying them their original birth records.
When I completed my intake forms, I noted this fact and specifically wrote on the form saying it was the first time any health provider acknowledged the existence and reality of an American adoptee. When I completed my exam, I thanked my doctor for this evidence-based protocol and told her it acknowledged millions of Americans may not have their medical history at no fault of their own. She told me her practice absolutely needed to know a patient’s background because many of the health problems they address have genetic precursors.
I also told her that my forthcoming book would be examining this topic at length. She was excited to hear about this and told me she would like to see the book. That conversation also told me many doctors may also like to know about the issue linking health, public health, and adoption and that my book can reach a large audience of readers who could become advocates for legal reform to change discriminatory state laws.
My immediate proposals to address this are two-fold. For anyone who is an adoptee, I encourage them to tell all of their health providers to change their intake forms to acknowledge health history is a legal issue that adoptees cannot change alone, and that medical professionals have moral and professional responsibilities to issue statements supporting birth record access for all adoptees, without exception. For medical professionals, I encourage you to become familiar with state laws that seal adoptees’ records and explain to the public how this undermines public and human health. This is within your range of practice to encourage healthy lives for everyone. Public health practitioners also need to be part of this, including the CDC.
