(NewsNation Now) — An Ohio family has sued a physician and a hospital system, saying the wrong sperm was used during a fertilization procedure in 1991. 

Jessica Harvey Galloway asked her parents for a DNA genealogical test for Christmas in 2020 hoping to finding distant relatives during a planned trip to Italy with her husband.

The test led to a shocking and disturbing discovery, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Akron. It showed her DNA contained none of her father’s Italian heritage. Mike Harvey, the man who helped raise her along with her mother, Jeanine, was not her biological father. Another man’s sperm was used during a fertility procedure.

Speaking to her parents, Galloway said, “No matter what, you are always my family.”

The family has sued Dr. Nicholas Spirtos, the fertility specialist who performed the procedure in August 2001, and the Akron-based Summa Health System. The procedure the Harveys underwent was intrauterine insemination, which involves inserting sperm directly into a woman’s uterus.

“My mothers and sisters lived healthy lives to 99, 97 and 95 years of age. We have no history of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or anything else in our family genes and we wanted to provide that for Jessica,” Mike Harvey said on “Banfield”. “I was glad to be able to share that with our daughter. But now, all the things are different.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and an order requiring Spirtos and Summa Health to find Mike Harvey’s genetic material or account for its location.

In part of the lawsuit, battery is alleged saying in part that Jeanine Harvey did not consent and would have not consented to defendants placing a stranger’s genetic material in their body. NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield asked the family’s attorney, Ashlie Case Sletvold, what the family wanted out of the suit.

“Lawsuits can never take us back to before the person was harmed. There’s no way to do that,” Sletvold said on “Banfield.” “But lawsuits can bring accountability, they can shed a spotlight on systemic problems. And as I’ve seen time and again, they can help people to heal through the exercise of seeking some measure of justice.”

A message seeking comment was left with Spirtos this week.

“We take this allegation seriously and understand the impact this has on the family,” Summa Health System spokesperson Mike Bernstein said in an emailed statement.

Since the first at-home DNA tests were introduced, they’ve become a tool for millions seeking to find out more about their identity. As of last year, more than 37 million testing kits have been sold by the five major DNA testing companies.

Based on population research and industry sampling, there are an estimated one million customers from this group who have received some kind of unexpected genetic surprise in their immediate families. The most common being that they are not genetically related to their father or that they have an unknown sibling

DNA testing for consumers is only expected to grow, a market survey estimates the industry could reach over a billion dollars in sales by 2026.