DNA tests were once the kind of thing we’d watch play out in films or shows; who really is the baby’s dad? Who committed the crime? Who does the mysterious body found under the floorboards belong to?
And yet nowadays, it’s the type of thing people genuinely give as gifts for Christmas with ancestry analysis and health checks taking over the Argos toys that we used to ask Santa to bring.
Except while people might do them ‘just for fun’, it doesn’t always work out so positively - like for this dad, who ended up discovering a heartbreaking truth about his ‘son’.
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Donna Johnson and husband Vanner decided to do DNA tests with their two sons, Vanner Jr, 18, and Tim, 12, on a bit of a whim to learn more about their heritage.
However, when they got the results through online, the Utah woman told The US Sun last year that she ‘figured there had been a mistake’.
While Vanner was the dad of their eldest, he wasn’t a match for the youngest son, leading Donna to a moment of ‘sickening clarity’.
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Due to problems with their health, the pair chose to use IVF for their second child and it ‘felt like a miracle’ when he was born in 2008.
Although Tim and Vanner Jr. looked different, the family initially brushed it off as normal.
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But the home DNA testing kit instead made them realise that they looked different because they had different biological fathers.
Vanner took Tim on a drive for ice cream at 12-years-old and told him that he wasn’t his biological dad.
He recalled: “He said, 'Well, you're still my dad, and I said, 'That's right, and I will always be your dad,' and that was special.”
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Having spoken to lawyers and counsellors, the couple also set out to find Tim’s biological dad, who turned out to be Devin McNeil.
There had been a mix-up at the IVF clinic, meaning Devin’s sperm sample had ended up being used for the Johnson’s IVF.
Having become very close like family since their realisation, the two families are pushing for stronger regulation of the industry.
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Donna told KUTV in 2021: “You go in and they talk about risks, and most of the risks have to do with getting pregnant and not getting pregnant or having hormonal imbalances, but none of them really talk about there could be a mix up.”
Vanner added: “We're lucky in our case, you know. Devin and his wife and their family ended up awesome.
"I don't imagine that it's always like that.”
Jess Battison