Advances In DNA Help To Uncover 70 Year-Old Black Market Adoption Scandal

Newborn Infant Yawning in Crib

Advancements in technology are helping to uncover a 70 year-old black market adoption scandal.

Nearly 70 years ago, a small town Georgian doctor had devised a scheme in which sold nearly 200 newborn babies on the black market. The scandal is now being uncovered thanks to advances in DNA mapping.

One of those babies, Jane Blasio, discovered as a young woman that she was one of those babies and launched a personal investigation to uncover the scandal.

“The Doctor was selling babies. He was telling mothers that the babies had died, and he was selling them. He was inducing women and selling those babies. I am one of the Hicks Babies and what brought me to find all this out was I was just looking for my birth story,” Blasio says.

But with limited technology in the 1980s the case ran into its share of roadblocks. In 1997 the story broke that Blasio was one of at least 30 babies involved in the scandal.

“One of the things I wish we had in 1997 when the story broke is the changes in DNA, if we had the DNA and the internet, I would put probably the reunification numbers to be up in the 90s versus what it is more like in the 30 percent range,” Blasio predicts.

Blasio documents her investigation in the six-hour special Taken at Birth premiering on TLC October 9-11, 2019 at 9PM ET.

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