“Perfect,” Aria said as she let her feet fall to the floor. Once again, she pulled herself up to the desk. All at once the whole story came to her. It involved a three-year-old boy conceived with donor sperm who was in a terminal state with advanced leukemia and who desperately needed a bone marrow transplant if he was to survive. Complicating the situation was the recent death of the mother days ago from a broken heart. Aria had to smile at herself for that last part, knowing she’d have to come up with something better, like an auto accident, while racing to the hospital. “Who could resist such a story?” she asked herself. And best of all, she imagined that the powers that be at GenealogyDNA would see the whole thing as a potential publicity gold mine even though Aria would have to remind them that because of HIPAA rules, they couldn’t be told the name of the stricken infant or the dead mother.
With significantly more confidence, Aria dialed the number on the GenealogyDNA website for those people interested in investment opportunities. When the phone was answered after the second ring, she was even more hopeful. When she’d called the other genetic DNA companies, the phone had had to ring ten or more times before being answered.
“GenealogyDNA,” a male voice said. “How can I be of service today?”
“My name is Dr. Aria Nichols, and I’m a senior resident in Pathology at New York University,” she said. As someone who wasn’t always glued to the truth starting in childhood, she knew from experience that if she was going to lie, it was best to at least start with the facts.
“And I am Vijay Srinivasan. How can I help you?”
“I’m calling about a major problem here at the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital,” she said, quickly improvising. “I was hoping that GenealogyDNA might be able to help because genetic genealogy helped find the Golden State Killer. I assume you remember that story?”
“Most definitely,” Vijay said. “That was good PR for our business.”
“I can understand why,” Aria said. “We, too, need to find a missing man. What I’d like to do is speak with someone in your company’s hierarchy and not a customer service representative.”
“I am one of the founding partners,” he said.
“Well, that’s perfect,” Aria said. She hadn’t expected to hit pay dirt so quickly. “Before I start, I need to be certain you are aware of HIPAA rules that protect the confidentiality of patient information.”
“I understand about patient confidentiality,” Vijay said, “but I don’t know anything about HIPAA, per se. Is that an acronym?”
“It is indeed,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I always have to look up the actual name, but the long and short of it is that I will not be able to tell you any of the names of the people involved in our situation even though one is deceased. Nor will you be able to use the name of our institution if and when you wish to tout this endeavor for the benefit of your company. Is that understood?”
“I believe I understand,” Vijay said.
“Then let me tell you the gist of the problem,” Aria said. “We have a very sick toddler who was conceived with donor sperm and whose mother just passed away a few days ago. To make a long story short, we desperately would like to find the father to obtain some donor bone marrow. Has GenealogyDNA had any experience helping people who have been conceived with donor sperm find their genetic fathers?”
“Yes, we have,” he said. “And we are proud of our record in that regard. I don’t know how much you know about ancestral DNA and how matches are found, but it is in this arena where our company excels. DNA matches are found by algorithms, and it is our belief that our algorithms are probably the best in the business. Did you know that the algorithms are proprietary in that each of the commercial DNA companies have their own?”
“I wasn’t aware of that,” Aria said.
“We not only get the most matches with a customer’s kit, but we get the least false-positive matches. We may be the new kids on the block, but we believe we have the best software, which is the reason we’ve been willing to challenge the established companies and have been able to find financing to do so.”
“How long has GenealogyDNA been in business?” she asked.
“Next month will be our first anniversary,” Vijay said. “If you are interested in investing, this might be the perfect time.”
“I’m more interested in solving this current problem,” Aria said. “But there is one other issue that I’d like to ask you about.”
“Please,” Vijay said. “This sounds like a situation that can be mutually beneficial.”
Such a comment was music to Aria’s ears. She needed GenealogyDNA to be selfishly interested on top of the Good Samaritan aspect, and it seemed that they were.
“To be entirely up front,” she said, “we already approached several of the more established ancestral DNA companies. I have to say that with none of them did I have the pleasure of talking with someone of your stature.”
“Thank you. You are too kind,” Vijay said.
“The other problem I encountered was an unacceptable delay in producing results,” Aria said. “With all of the companies it was weeks just to analyze the DNA samples whereas in our situation we are looking at days if we want to save the toddler’s life.”
“I’m not surprised,” Vijay said. “Processing time is another issue where GenealogyDNA has made a point to be competitive. Many of the established ancestral DNA companies outsource their analyses. We here at GenealogyDNA do not. We have our own lab to provide vertical integration, and we rent our high-density SNP microarrays so they can be upgraded as soon as newer arrays or chips are available. We intend to stay ahead of the curve.”
“You have a lab here in the city?” Aria asked. This was sounding better and better.
“No, not in the city,” he said. “Our lab is on Long Island, about an hour drive away.”
“So, you could get results faster than the weeks it takes in the other companies?”
“Absolutely,” Vijay said proudly. “If the DNA amplification goes smoothly, we could do it overnight in this type of emergency circumstance.”
“That’s fantastic,” she said, and meant it. “Now, there is one other issue. With the mother recently deceased, we obviously cannot use saliva as the other companies use. Would blood suffice?”
“Of course,” Vijay said. “Saliva has been used purely because of its ease for the customer, even though it creates an added problem of having to deal with the DNA of aural bacteria and fungi. It creates an extra step of isolating the human DNA. Using blood is far superior and will make the amplification process profoundly simpler.”
“This all sounds very encouraging,” Aria said. “Let me tell you a bit more of the circumstance that we are in. The child has an aggressive form of myelogenous leukemia, which has been resistant to any of the newer forms of treatment. A bone marrow transplant is the only hope and the father would be the best possible source. It is a crisis situation and only a matter of days or a week or two at most. Do you think you could help?”
“Most definitely,” he said. “There is no guarantee, of course, since it depends on at least some of the relatives of the father having contributed their DNA to the ancestral DNA pool and created family trees. But from purely an organizational standpoint, we can certainly produce the kits for the mother and the child on a timely basis. On top of that, for such a cause, I could have our in-house software people, including me, do the matching and try to construct a family tree for the ailing toddler. As an aside, do you have reason to believe the unknown father is from the NYC metropolitan area?”
“Yes,” Aria said. “I’m quite sure that he is.”
“That could possibly help,” Vijay said. “Sometimes talking people into sharing their genealogical information can be difficult and a face-to-face meeting can make the difference.”