Practice Prevention

• Adoptees often want access to their medical background to practice preventative care. They want to know what diseases they are most at risk for based on heredity, and what methods may have worked for their parents or other close relatives in bettering their health. For instance, if an adoptee knows that her mother's side of the family is at risk for highly metastatic breast cancer, she may elect to get a prophylactic mastectomy to reduces her odds of contracting the disease.
  
  

Plan Care

• Planning medical care is another reason that adoptees should know their medical backgrounds. Deciding what types of treatment, if any, have worked for other relatives can influence this choice. To use the same example as above, if a women knows that chemotherapy was unsuccessful in treating numerous members of her birth family for cancer, she may elect to skip that treatment. Instead, she may decide to pursue surgical or radiation methods as alternatives.
  
  

Share with Family

• Adoptees sometimes want to know their medical histories so that these can be shared with other family members. For instance, if the adoptee has a birth sibling or half sibling, discussing medical records can help shed light on shared conditions or illnesses. Non-biological family members may also be curious to know the adoptee's history for various reasons. For instance, relatives may make legal arrangements for custody of their child to go to the adoptee in the event that the relatives pass away. They may, however, want to reconsider their choice if the adoptee is at risk for one or more serious diseases or conditions.
  
  

Family Planning

• Finally, adoptees should know their medical histories so that they are able to plan and provide for their own families. Adoptees may elect to also adopt a child if they learn that both themselves and their spouses are at risk for the same disease; they may not wish to pass these defective genes onto their biological children.