COLORADO CITY, Colo. (AP) — 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 existTwo 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.
