COLORADO CITY, Colo. — The families of two men who discovered through DNA tests that they were switched at birth 38 years ago are accusing a North Dakota hospital of robbing them of the lives they were supposed to lead.
Kyle Bylin discovered his birth family after taking an at-home test he chose randomly during a Christmas gift-exchange. That led to his biological aunt on a genealogy platform. Her nephew, Jeremy Morrison, then had his DNA tested. The results were irrefutable.
“That’s when my mind was just completely blown,” Bylin said. “We could have never imagined that it was an actual birth switch that occurred.”
Morrison said he was convinced as soon as he saw a photo of Bylin's brother and realized they looked very much alike.
Bylin and Morrison were the only babies born on Jan. 26, 1988, at Unity Medical Center in Grafton, North Dakota, according to their lawsuit filed in state court last week. Somehow, they went home with the wrong parents.
A hospital statement says there’s no evidence staff were responsible for the switch.
But Bylin, born Jeremy Morrison, says he still has the hospital bracelet that misidentified him as Kyle Bylin.
The hospital records no longer exist
Two years have passed since the DNA tests shattered what they thought they knew about their families — including disorienting moments, emotional family meetings and thoughts about the what-ifs.
“Kyle is still my son — that is never going to change,” Evelyn Newton, who raised him as her own, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday. “But I feel robbed of the life I should have had with my biological son. You can't go back and replace 35 years. First steps, driving a car, getting married — how do you make up for that?”
The hospital doesn't dispute that the babies were switched at some point. It says it's working to better understand what happened, but has uncovered no evidence that its administration or staff were responsible for the lives-altering error.
“We recognize the profound impact this discovery has had on them and their families,” Unity Medical's statement says. “Unfortunately, because of the passage of nearly four decades, the medical and staffing records that might have provided additional clarity no longer exist, and no members of the delivery team from that time are still employed by the hospital.”
The knowledge hasn't changed the way Morrison feels about the family he's always known. He still thinks of the parents he grew up with — Elizabeth O'Toole and Terry Morrison — as his parents. And aside from some challenging times — like wishing he had a sibling to lean on when he was 7 and they divorced — he says his childhood was fine.
“I was loved. I played sports. I did well in school,” Morrison said. “A DNA test is not going to take away 38 years of memories.”
The shocking truth led to emotional encounters
Morrison now lives in Colorado City, Colorado, and works as a welding inspector for a wind energy company. Had he not been switched at birth, he figures he'd still be with his biological brother and father, working on the North Dakota grain farm where Bylin grew up.
Newton said she never had any thought that Kyle might not be their biological son as she and her then-husband, Keith Bylin, were raising him. True, the immediate family had light hair and Kyle’s was dark. But her husband had relatives with dark hair, and Newton herself was adopted, so she didn’t know what her own blood relatives looked like.
For Bylin, questions about nature versus nurture have become more personal. As he pursued an academic career far from North Dakota, he figured the political debates over Thanksgiving dinner were just a staple of American family life.
“You’re just kind of shaking your fist, like, how can this be my family? How am I so different from them?” Bylin said. “It turns out that we’re just totally different people, period.”
Bylin and Morrison have now met their biological parents — the encounters were welcoming but awkward, they said. They have yet to meet each other, but have spoken on the phone.
“We’ve tried to unite as a group and just recognize that no matter what, there’s different ways that this can be socially messy,” Bylin said. “Everyone’s getting to know people that they didn’t know before.”
Others have discovered they were switched at birth
Such cases are rare, but at-home DNA tests are making them easier to uncover:
Modern tech helps hospitals prevent switches
Dr. Jonathan Marron, a pediatric oncologist who also teaches at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics, says such mix-ups should happen “pretty close to never” nowadays.
“As often as all clinicians, doctors, nurses, social workers, everybody else, gripe about the electronic health records,” the digital backstop is a clear benefit, Marron said.
Attorney Tim O’Keefe said he tried for a year to reach a monetary settlement with the hospital before filing a lawsuit claiming emotional distress due to negligence and medical malpractice. The families have spent this time adjusting to new realities.
“I know the truth now, but we’re still working to build relationships,” Morrison said. “I mean, it’s not like I can go back in time and rebuild what’s already lost. It’s a work in progress, just like me.”
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Susan Montoya Bryan contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Johnson reported from Seattle, Schuettler from Phoenix. Schuettler is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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