I should stop watching these Russian TV shows because they traumatize me. I just watched one where mothers of 35-year-old men discovered their children had been swapped at the hospital where they were born and they had raised other people’s children. Imagine how these poor families must feel. Poor parents. And the men themselves who have been deprived of their real families for so many years!
This is too horrible.
The only piece of good news is that nowadays there are DNA tests that allow people to establish true paternity. What a great invention of humanity!
Clarissa's Blog 
Something like this is not horribly uncommon in reality.
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Let’s not try to traumatize me even more than I am already.
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Didn’t they say in the program that 4 children are swapped daily in Moscow?
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You also get cases of people being raised, for one reason or another, by the “incorrect” mother. I also recall a case in the UK of a woman, who was undergoing ART, having her ova switched with some other woman’s.
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What’s ART?
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Assisted reproductive technology.
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Even though it’s not a good thing and we should prevent it, this is not a big deal at all for me, especially 35 years later. In this case, real parents are the non-biological ones. In fact, we don’t know for sure, but maybe these non-biological parents were best suited for both of these children. It’s possible.
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“In fact, we don’t know for sure, but maybe these non-biological parents were best suited for both of these children. It’s possible.”
– I thought you were not religious.
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I said “maybe”. We don’t know what it would have been. Even though I would learn someday that my real mother is not my biological one, I would not regret it at all. 🙂
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I think mandatory DNA testing is a good idea to prevent this and other horrible scenarios.
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Did you know that paternity testing is illegal in France (and I believe Germany) without a court order? Apparently to “protect families”, because paternity tests could cause some men to leave their wives after discovering that they’ve been cheating.
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If this is true, it’s absolutely horrible. Sadly, Western Europe has slowly started moving towards barbarity.
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I recommend to you Battaille’s ON NIETZSCHE, where he celebrates living his life on the basis of chance. Actually, I’m not sure that is a bad idea. I don’t really believe that genetics and the links it forms are altogether vital, although they can provide interesting material at times.
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I agree, it would be a traumatic discovery. It would take a lot of time and counselling to come round and accept such a situation.
Thankfully I know that this hasn’t happened to my kids as they both resemble their father and me physically.
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Talking about trauma. Did you hear that a meteor exploded over Russia this morning injuring 900+ people and damaging 300 buildings? And this is a tiny version of the meteor that’s going to pass within 17,000 miles of earth at 2 pm this afternoon. Reminds me of the Tunguska meteor in 1908 that flattened a good part of Lake Baikal in Russia. Is Russia some kind of meteor magnet?
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Seriously? This is so horrible.
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Yes. According to Russia Today.
“Chelyabinsk administration’s website said nearly 3,000 buildings were damaged to varying extents by the meteor shower in the city, including 34 medical facilities and 361 schools and kindergartens. The total amount of window glass shattered amounts to 100,000 square meters, the site said, citing city administration head Sergey Davydov. The ministry also said that no local power stations or civil aircraft were damaged by the meteorite shower, and that “all flights proceed according to schedule.”
Here’s a video.
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This is very scary. Poor Russians, they go through one disaster after another.
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I take it that you learnt about the Tunguska event in school in the Soviet Union. This is like a cork popping from a wine bottle compared to 1908. At least back then it happened in the middle of nowhere, so no one was killed.
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“I take it that you learnt about the Tunguska event in school in the Soviet Union.”
– Actually, no, that was never discussed. I read about it for the first time in a science fiction book where it was explained as a landing of a spaceship with aliens. 🙂
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The spaceship story originates with a story by Alexander Kazantsev that it was an alien spaceship seeking water from Lake Baikal, but instead blows up, causing the event.
Had it happened over a populated area, the biggest bang in recorded history could have destroyed a small city. Some people believe Lake Cheko was created by a remnant of the exploding asteroid that cause the 1908 event.
Have you seen footage or photographs of hectares of trees all blown down parallel to each other?
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“Have you seen footage or photographs of hectares of trees all blown down parallel to each other?”
– No! Do you have any links?
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The WM Commons has a few photographs from the Kulik expedition in 1927.
This old newsreel contains selections from expedition film. Starting at around 28 s you see the camera panning across trees blown down parallel to each other:
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Wow, this is really impressive. Thank you!
As usual, Americans know more about this than we do.
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