The families of two North Dakota men say a hospital mix-up nearly four decades ago stole the lives they were meant to have, after DNA testing revealed the men had been switched at birth 38 years earlier.
Kyle Bylin’s unexpected search for his roots began with an at-home DNA kit he picked almost by chance during a Christmas gift exchange. The results connected him to a biological aunt on a genealogy website, setting off a chain of discoveries that eventually led her nephew, Jeremy Morrison, to take his own DNA test. The findings left little room for doubt.
“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 the truth began to feel undeniable when he saw a picture of Bylin’s brother and was struck by how closely the two resembled each other.
According to a lawsuit filed last week in state court, Bylin and Morrison were the only two babies delivered on Jan. 26, 1988, at Unity Medical Center in Grafton, North Dakota. At some point, the complaint alleges, each infant was sent home with the other’s parents.
In a statement, the hospital said there is no evidence showing that its staff caused or were responsible for the alleged switch.
Bylin, who was born as Jeremy Morrison, says he still possesses the hospital bracelet that incorrectly identified him as Kyle Bylin.
The hospital records no longer exist
In the two years since the DNA results upended their understanding of family, both men and their relatives have faced a wave of confusion, painful conversations, emotional reunions and lingering questions about the lives that might have been.
“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.”
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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:
1. In 2024, two women sued the government of Norway alleging a breach of human rights after discovering they had been switched.
2. Two men who believe they were switched at birth in 1942 sued a Roman Catholic diocese in West Virginia in 2020, alleging negligence and breach of duty by the hospital where they were born.
3. In 2018 in Pennsylvania, testing revealed that two girls had been switched some 75 years earlier.
4. In 2016, the Canadian government launched an investigation after DNA evidence indicated two men from a northern Manitoba Indigenous community were switched at birth in 1975.
5. In 2024, two women sued the government of Norway alleging a breach of human rights after discovering they had been switched.
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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