Genetic Testing Brings Families Together, and Sometimes Tears Them Apart

All his life, Neil Schwartzman searched for his biological family. He was adopted in 1960 at 10 days old, and he never knew where he came from. At first, he looked for answers by going to social services in his hometown of Montreal, Quebec, and trying to access adoption records. "There was nothing in the file," he said. "Everything I did ended up being a dead end." As he approached middle age, in 2008, he had just about given up. That's when he heard about the direct-to-consumer genetic testing service 23andMe.

Unlike previous inquiries about his origins, this one occurred at the molecular level. He spit in a tube and sent it off to 23andMe's California headquarters for analysis. For about $100, they sent back information about his genealogy (biological relatives), ancestry (lineage and geographic origins), and — this was before a 2013 Food and Drug Administration crackdown — his health, including genetic predispositions for various diseases and behavioral traits. Schwartzman said he didn't expect much from his foray into personal DNA testing. He just signed up "as a last-ditch effort...