she just called me and said, are you sitting down? you have an identical twin brother. i literally almost drove off the road. >> tonight on "20/20," a scandal unfolding. identical twins and triplets separated as babies, but none of them knew it. >> i was in shock that i have an identical twin. i need to find her. that is my mission in life is to find her. >> reporter: a prominent adoption agency, deliberately splitting apart twin babies. >> it's just wrong. what they did was really, really wrong. >> they didn't give a damn for anybody. >> it's people's lives. >> reporter: the only thing more shocking, it was all part of a secret decade's long study. >> they weren't just separated. they were placed in homes and each of them studied for more than a decade. >> it was weird and i hated it.

>> reporter: they say, poked and prodded, filmed in tests like these. >> like lab rats. they didn't care. literally like lab rats. >> reporter: pieces of their child hoods hidden from them in boxes under lock and key. >> does that show you they knew what they were doing is wrong, and it's so unethical? >> reporter: now we're coming face to face with some of the early players. >> you knew she was a twin, and you never mentioned it. >> i mean, i'm sorry. >> reporter: but tonight, how many other twins from the study are still out there, still in the dark? >> you stole a childhood. you can't get that back. >> somebody has to own up to this. they have to. >> reporter: i'm david muir. >> reporter: and i'm elizabeth vargas, and this is "20/20." adorable identical twins, gracey and audrey born and prated in china, and adopted by different families in the united states. they reunited on "good morning

america," but they were 10 years old. >> audrey, are you ready? >> yeah. >> you want to do this? >> yeah. >> come on. all right, gracie. come on out and meet your sister. [ cheers ] [ cheers and applause ] >> can i touch you? >> reporter: now meet howard burack who surprisingly has a lot in common with those little girls. you always knew you were adopted. >> i did. i was adopted, and, you know, i grew up in a nice middle class -- upper middle class family in a suburban area in rockland county. normal childhood. normal whatever. >> reporter: you went to the

louise wise agency. >> yes. >> reporter: when he was 35 years old, he became increasingly curious about iz had biological mother. he wrote to the louise wise agency to ask for information. somebody called back with news that hit like a bolt of lightning. >> she said, you have an identical twin brother. i'm, like, thanks for telling me that. how do you find that person? that's what i wanted to do. >> reporter: i can't imagine hearing that news. >> dwryeah. it was -- not too many people get to hear that i guess. >> reporter: do you remember having feelings of loneliness or feeling something was missing? >> i had that a little bit, and i have definitely had that feeling over the years for sure. >> reporter: what does it feel like? >> like you're missing something. don't know what it was. you can't touch it, you can't feel it. just something was there. >> reporter: but this exciting news was bittersweet because louise wise services told howard new york law did not allow the

agency to reveal the identity of his identical twin. >> i spent about two years, you know, every day thinking about this. it never left. >> reporter: did you start doing that thing where you start looking at people on the train? >> i did. >> reporter: looking at faces for a face that looked like you? >> yep. and i was, you know, i would tell people, like, if you ever see a person that looks like me -- >> reporter: stop them and get their name. >> yeah. yeah. >> reporter: and it sounds like you were haunted by it. >> it was pretty disturbing. i mean, it was just -- i don't know. it's, like, how can i find this person? am i ever going to find this person? is this person alive? >> reporter: howard's story is part of a new documentary by lori shineski. her film uncovers a secret scandal hidden for deck kaudade. how many twins are there, and how ma how many are aware they are twins, and how many are not? >> reporter: a shocking outrage. families deceived about their

origins. >> my parents used to always tell me i was born special because they chose me as opposed to just had me. >> reporter: they decided to separate these twins and triplets, and place them in different families and never told the families that they had adopted a half of a twin set or a third of a triplet set. >> reporter: shineski titled her film "the twinning reaction." >> the easiest way to explain "the twinning reaction" is it is the twin bond that's so obvious to us today. in the womb together, and crib together, touching and holding each other, and looking to each other. interacting from a very, very young age. >> reporter: twins, triplets and other multiples hold a special fascination for those of us born alone. hollywood loves twins too. >> come play with us, danny. >> reporter: whether by a precious fluke of biology or mother nature exquisitely repeating herself, twins are

considered by some to have a mystical bond, an unbreakable connection begun in the womb. lawrence wright has written about twins for the "new yorker" magazi magazine, and published a book on the subject. >> we have kinship relationship, but the most unusual and rare is the identical twin relationship. you are closer emotionally to your twin than anyone else you will ever meet. it's a clone. it's a replica of you. it's precious in a way. >> so here's what we told the world. that you have arrived. >> reporter: sharon morello was born in 1966, and was adopted through louise wise services and then an adoption agency for jewish children. that was the place to go if you

were a jewish family looking to adopt a jewish baby. >> that's right. it was apparently the most prominent jewish adoption agency in new york city. it was very well respected. >> reporter: researching her documentary, lori shineski, now a consultant for abc news, dug up life-changing surprises, including a stunning secret about which even at age 48, sharon had no clue. lori called sharon's adoptive mother. >> then my mother calls me and says, some lady just called me to say, you know, she is doing a documentary and that you have an identical twin sister. and i said, excuse me? i hung up the phone. >> reporter: are you serious? >> i was in shock. i couldn't -- it took me hours to call her back and say, what's going on? >> reporter: she was never told you were a twin. >> that hurts me. >> reporter: would she have adopted twins? >> she said she would have definitely. >> reporter: still ahead, the search for sharon and howard's

missing twins, and disturbing childhood memories of strangers in the house. >> we never understood why they were really coming. it was weird, and i hated it. >> like, this is not cool. >> reporter: stay with us. now there's a soft werther's with luscious cocoa crème,you. tucked inside our soft werther's caramel. werther's original crème soft caramels - in cocoa and new vanilla.

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>> reporter: howard burack was dumbstruck to learn he had an identical twin. the brother he never knew he had is doug rausch. doug found out he had a twin in 2004 when the adoption service that split them up was going out of business. >> when louise wise was shutting

down, there was a woman there who had cancer and who knew she was dying and before she left and before this place closed down, she called doug. >> reporter: guilty conscience? >> yeah. she couldn't go to other grave without letting some of these kids know. >> she said, i'm not supposed to do this, and i'm going to do it anyway. i appreciate that. >> reporter: her conscience took over at that point. >> yeah. so someone had one. >> reporter: exactly. >> she said, are you sitting down? she said, i have some news for you. you have an identical twin brother. i literally almost drove off the road. that's not something you ever expect to hear. >> reporter: doug gave the agency his number and waited to hear from his identical twin brother he had never known he had. arriving at the airport in columbus, ohio, a long-delayed reunion. >> hi. >> my god.

>> how you doing? >> reporter: two years after finding out his brother existed, howard is finally getting to meet him in person. >> this is a miracle. >> it's definitely an eerie feeling. >> just like looking at yourself in the mirror, and i think we hit it off right away and, you know, instant connection. i felt like i knew him my whole life. >> reporter: their lives began as a single cell that split into two. they share almost identical dna. as they compared the lives they have led separate and apart, they noticed patterns. >> he is very laid back, and he is very sincere. >> doug is very laid back. i us a make the joke that sometimes we have to check his pulse to make sure he is still

living. >> howard's ideal date night is going to a five-star restaurant and getting prime rib. >> steak is his favorite food. >> when they first met each other, it was like they always knew each other. >> doug would always look and me and say, i thought it would be cool to be a twin. >> we live parallel lives essentially. >> you both have three kids. >> yeah. similar ages too. >> right in the middle. watch where you are going. >> reporter: you guys both coach hockey? >> yeah. >> yeah. our kids both started playing and we both -- i never played growing up. >> i never did either. >> reporter: both put your wallet in your front pocket. >> i don't know if that's genetic. >> reporter: you got married the same year. what year? >> '92. >> reporter: you both had to think about it? >> that was slow. >> they both don't use any

condiments at all. it's not just ketchup and mustard, but condiments in in gener general. the first question diane asked, does he use them? he has no purpose for them. >> reporter: fitting like a puzzle, that's what sharon morello wanted too. she was obsessed with finding her identical twin. >> that's all you do. live and breathe it. >> reporter: why that obsessive need? >> it was fascinating and cool. and what would it have been like growing up? would we have been best friends? hated each other? shared everything? so many different things, but we never had that chance. >> reporter: sharon was determined not the let this chance slip by. >> i found her on facebook and i sent her a little message. we instantly bonded. i mean from that first e-mail, it just, like, we clicked. we even named our younger wione the same name.

>> reporter: are you kidding? >> we both have a joshua. that was, like, the first thing, like, no way. >> reporter: in fact, news of identical twins and triplets secretly separated by louise wise services have been leaking out for decades. in 1980, three 19-year-old men from the new york city area, robert schaafrin, and eddie galland, total strangers, they were triplets separated at birth by louise wise services. they became folk heroes making the rounds on national tv. >> what kind of cigarettes do you smoke? >> marlboro. >> do you all smoke the same brand? >> yes. >> does it taste similar? >> yes. >> reporter: making a movie with madonna, and a stop here at abc on "nightline" in 1989. >> did you laugh as much before you knew one another? >> i don't think so.

i don't think we were as happy. i don't think we were ever this happy. >> this is a magic moment, guys. ♪ this magic moment >> it really completed our lives. >> reporter: but as all these identical siblings get reacquainted, they have one more thing in common, something strange, something uncomfortable. do you ever remember having people come over to the house to observe you? >> i do remember just a person coming and i remember, like, looking at books. they would show me different pictures. i would have to say what did i think that picture was? >> reporter: each of them has vague, unsettling memories of intrusive strangers coming to visit throughout their early childhood. >> they would film me and make me ride my bike and do this test and that test. >> reporter: what would they ask you to do? >> psychology tests and drawing and just looking at things and ink blots and drawings and

talking to you and asking questions. and i was kind of a shy kid and, you know, you have people asking you questions and asking you to do stuff. it was a little bit horrifying. >> reporter: it turns out after the twins and triplets were secretly separated, they were then enrolled in a mysterious psychological study without so much as a word of it whispered to their unsuspecting adoptive families. >> they made it sound like this was to everybody's benefit to see how smart this kid is because i don't know him. we are adopting a child we don't know, and we don't know his background, but it never dawned on me. why are they coming back so many times? >> reporter: still ahead, the secret so-called adoption study. what were they really after? stay with us. pssst. what? i switched to geico and got more. more savings on car insurance? a-ha. and an award-winning mobile app. that is more.

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[ cheers and applause ] >> reporter: little look alikes, audrey and china, adopted in the u.s., and getting to know each other again. >> hi. >> hi. >> we kind of talk the same, and a lot the same. >> a lot the same. >> reporter: chinese officials separated the girls and allowed them to be adopted to unsuspecting families. not surprising in some parts of the world, but the same thing was happening right here. this brick building in new york city housed louise wise services in the 1960s.

the adoption agency acted on the advice of its consulting psychiatrist, dr. viola bernard. divine wisdom about twins, she claimed they were better off apart. >> dr. viola bernard was a respected doctor in her time. >> she was very well respected, and did many good things, but she believed that she was right and that she had -- >> reporter: the right. >> the right to separate these twins. >> reporter: without telling anybody. >> right. >> twins were purposely being separated because of a misguided, unproven notion on the part of viola bernard that twins are better off being in separate families. there is nothing, no basis to ever support that. >> reporter: and then dr. bernard doubled down. she enabled a friend, another psychiatrist, dr. peter knew bauer who begin a long-term

study of the separated children. they did not tell the adoptive paern paer parents the children were twin, nor the true nature of the study. >> you never study people without their full knowledge. they were misinformed that it was a child development study, and that is hiding basic facts. >> larry perlman was a graduate student when he was hired to work on the twin study. he said the doctor was after the science of human development, an answer to the age-old question of nature versus nurture. is biology destiny or would identical children raised by different parents grow up to live very different lives? >> we wanted to see if we can tease out some of the subtleties of these processes and how that might affect the development of these two individuals who are genetically identical, but being raised by totally different

families. >> reporter: there is reason to believe that neubauer ranged for some of them to be placed in homes of various economic status to see how those differences affected children. sharon says it led to a difficult conversation when she and her sister first met. what did she tell you about her life story? >> unfortunately, that was one of her first quotes was, you had the better life. and that still hurts me. it was always, you had a better life. you had more, you know? >> reporter: like a scene in these old science films, perlman says researchers visited the separated twins in their adoptive homes several times a year when they were babies, up until the time they were 10 or even 12 years old. >> there would be some initial rapport building. show me around, and show me his toys and what have you. >> reporter: they studied the developmental and psychology and iq tests. >> there would be arithmetic

questions to do in your head. maybe some of them would be riding a bike, and maybe some interaction with the mother. >> reporter: they weren't only interested in the children. researchers scrutinized the adoptive parents as well, especially the mothers. house in a state of chaos, dolls and clothes on the floor. the furniture is stained and unattractive and tastelessly arranged. >> a lot of excruciating detail about the mother, herself, you know? >> reporter: did the mothers know this was written about them? >> i don't know if they understood they were under so much scrutiny. >> reporter: both doctors are dead now, but lawrence wright asked them about the study. >> have there been ethical questions raised? >> there have been questions raised by a number of people. >> i don't think he ever really acknowledged the damage he might have done to the twins

themselves. they had been deprived of that relationship their entire lives by iscientists who wanted to study them. >> reporter: the requirement that the scientists get the consent of human research would not become law until 1974. >> so that study done today would be illegal. >> reporter: but in the 1960s, the doctors involved in separating and studying the twins had to have known that if the public found out what they were doing, the consequences could be explosive. neubauer talks about the reaction he got when he tried to convince another adoption agency to try to separate twins for his study. >> he said, how can you separate what god has united and put together? how can you do that? and i said to her, but you are in the field of adoption. you separate mother and child all the time.

>> reporter: this research may contain amazing discoveries about nature versus nurture, but the twins will never know. after years of testing them and decades of sitting on the data in the end, dr. neubauer never published his study. why wouldn't they publish? >> i would like to know the answer to that. >> reporter: what happened to all this research? >> the neubauer's data is controlled by the jewish board of family and services and that is sealed until the year 2066. >> reporter: that's right. neubauer buried the study until 2066, likely long after any of the twins will still be alive. >> even if the study had provided some serious intelligence about behavior and so forth, even then it would be bad, but here nothing came of it. there's no study, no anything. a bunch of locked files.

>> 2011, doug and howard wrote a letter to the jewish board requesting their twin study data. they received a letter back stating that they were not in the study, so therefore they were not entitled to access this information. it's not true. >> reporter: if they wanted those home movies and detailed notes about themselves, they would have to find a way to prove they had been in the study. a tall order nearly half a century later. >> if they had just looked at me and said, sorry, you know, we shouldn't have done that, here's your stuff. i think that would have been more than enough and i would have been satisfied with that, but the fact that they tried to hide it and cover it up just made it ten times worse. >> reporter: when we come back, this siblings' saga takes a tragic turn. >> his wife says that he was never able to get over the separation, the lost years. >> reporter: stay with us.

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>> reporter: doug rausch and howard burack still want access to the mountains of data gathered about them when they were children, and at the very least, they want an apology. >> i'm aggravated that people are continuing to deny and stonewall and not accept the responsibility for what they did. >> oh, my gosh. >> reporter: documentary film maker, lori shineski, along with larry coburn took up their cause. >> you think it's incumbent on all of us to take a good, hard, honest look at what happened and

to the extent possible, try to make it right. >> reporter: in 2013 with the help of that former researcher, larry perlman, and after two years of battles, they broke through the jewish board's resistaresi resistance and got some of the records released. >> okay. see what happens. won't even do anything. there we go. it says film sequence. data visit 1-10-68. most of the power is being tested. >> reporter: what did you read in those records? >> it's amazing to read some of the stuff about what you were thinking or saying when you were little. a little kid, it's strange. >> reporter: dr. bernard, the consultant who advised breaking up twins for adoption told journalist lawrence wright she only favored separating twins who had not had time to develop a strong attachment to each other. >> it would be traumatically separating those who had an opportunity to be attached to each other.

>> reporter: so even the doctor who was saying twins are better if they are raised separately was saying if they have had this thing called the twinning reaction, don't separate them. >> correct. >> reporter: because it's traumatic. >> yes. in her own words. >> reporter: but as they sift through their own records, they discovered dr. bernard didn't follow her own rule. it turns out they were together for six months before being separated and adopted to different families. for the first six months of your life, the only consistent thing in either of your lives was each other. >> what they did was really, really wrong. and the more, you know, stuff i read, the more wrong it kind of seems and the more -- the more upset it gets. >> reporter: in page after page, doug and howard's records reveal harrowing details of the stress and trauma they endured after their separation. >> that's pretty disturbing. people sitting around,

dissecting your life. >> reporter: one researcher wrote about doug and howard, clinically referred to as c-5, and c-6. both boys show a decline in motor dexterity. both also begin rocking after adoption with c-5 rocking for a longer period of time than c-6. c-5 also shows headbanging which continues until his second birthday. >> it's upsetting to know these people were able to affect our lives in a way that i didn't even understand, and i don't know. i don't know why i'm emotional about it, but it's just -- it's not really in my nature, but it's just -- it's just hard to -- i'm not really introspective, and you say, if that didn't happen, you know, maybe some of the heart spots wouldn't have been hard. i don't know. so -- >> they didn't give a damn for

anybody. only what they were doing, their work. these are uncon shenable people. >> they stole a childhood on some levels. not that -- i wouldn't trade my life for anything, but you can't give back. you can't get that back. >> hi. nice to meet you. >> reporter: there was fallout on sharon's iside as well. disappointingly, her relationship with her newfound twin has soured. what happened? there was so much promise in the first visit. >> she knew i want the story out there, and she didn't want that. so that started i think tearing us apart. >> reporter: and now you don't speak? >> no. we do not speak any longer. which is very, very sad. >> reporter: and it gets worse. among the 15 children known to have been separated, there are reports of serious mental health issues. it appears at least three separated siblings committed

suicide, including one of those famous triplets, eddy, who in 1995, 15 years after reuniting with his brothers, took his own life. >> his wife says that he was never able to get over the separation and the lost years of the 19 years he didn't have with his brothers. >> reporter: is this because of the separation? this twinning reaction that may have happened, and then they were pulled apart? >> it's their belief that it at least had some impact. the separations had some impact on their feelings of sadness and loneliness and depression as children. >> reporter: when louise wise services went out of business in 2004, its records came here to the spence-chapin agency in new york. it now has the answer to a haunting question. of the thousands of louise wise adoptions, how many other twins or triplets were separated? we contacted spence-chapin

repeatedly. >> it's elizabeth vargas calling from "20/20" abc news. we have left several messages with you over the last week. >> reporter: they have refused to return our calls. as for the study gathered by dr. neubauer, being sealed. only the jewish board has the right to release it. they say, they are committed to providing individuals identified as part of the study access to their records in a timely and transparent manner. adding, we do not endorse the study, and deeply regret it took place. >> that is just a lame statement i think since they have these records, they should send them to all the people that they have records for. so that's kind of bull crap right there. excuse my french. >> reporter: because of that secrecy, it's impossible to know just how many other babies may have been separated. as adults, still might not know

to this day they have a twin. >> i guess the debate is whose data is it? used to be my information. it was about me. i don't know. why is -- you have any right to it because someone in their will or estate said this should be locked up and no one gets to see it. >> reporter: it's your information. >> they are lying to everybody. >> reporter: still ahead, the twins come face to face with some of the people who prodded and poked and filmed them as babies. the people who helped keep the secrets of the twin study. >> hi. >> hi. >> reporter: and surprising justification for splitting up babies. >> it was a time as we were saying, it was hard to get white babies, and so this was an opportunity for two families to have a baby. >> reporter: watch what happens next.

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>> reporter: it was dr. viola bernard's idea to separate twins. it was dr. peter neubauer's idea to study them. and they both agreed not to tell the adoptive families, a secret they would need help keeping. help from researchers just like larry perlman who took a job working on the twin study as a young graduate student. >> they didn't believe that the infants would register the separation, would register the knowledge that they had a twin in the first few months.months..

well, it was -- it was speculation because nobody had studied infants. >> reporter: lori shineski informed doug and howard that perlman had studied them in their separate adoptive homes when they were just 6 years old. more than 40 years later, the twins visited him at his home. >> hi. >> hi. how are you doing? >> larry perlman. >> doug rausch. >> nice to meet you. >> it's been awhile, huh? >> yeah. 44 years. exactly. >> we were 6 when you -- >> yes. yes. i actually pulled up the testing i did on you guys when you were exactly 6. so i know there were ten twins at that time. >> ten sets? >> ten altogether. five sets. >> did you guys research it as a job? but for the people that were in it -- >> that's their life. >> it's, you know, people making

decisions about your life, and you have no control over some of them actively lie to you outright. lied to me parents anyway. >> it got me thinking about the damage that was done to the families, to the parents who were kept in the dark about the fact they had adopted twins, and that was a piece that i had never really thought through very much. you know, that made me sad, and it made me think how much of an injustice has been done to all of these twins who were subjects of this experiment. >> reporter: lori shineski tracked down another researcher who made house calls studying the unknowingly separated twins and their families. her name is janet david. as a researcher she had made a home visit to sharon morello when she was a little girl. as janet david arrived for the home visit, however, she

realized she knew sharon's adoptive mother, vivian. they had met in college. still, even with that personal connection, janet kept the secret. janet got out of her car that day, and went inside that house and studied that family and that twin and never told that her baby was identical twin? >> no. >> reporter: wow. more than 40 years after janet and other researchers studied sharon, they agreed to meet sharon and her mother. you may remember this woman. abc news consultant, pam slaton. she brought the story to "20/20's" attention. >> janet. hi, i'm sharon. >> nice to see you. >> yes. i was a research assistant on the study that sharon was in, and vivian and i actually went

to college together. what a small world. incredible coincidences. >> but if janet expected a happy reunion, that's not what happened. things quickly get tense. >> you knew that she was a twin. >> yeah. >> and you never mentioned it. >> i can't answer the question. i don't know. we were told that this was the way the study was set up, that the families didn't know they had a twin, and that's how it was. >> because you know it's something that i would have really liked to know. >> yeah. >> and so would she. >> i'm sure. >> even when the study was over, why did you never call to say, by the way, you know, there's a twin out there if you ever want to find her? >> well, i left the study shortly after i met your family, but i was low on the totem pole. i had just been starting graduate school, so i had no authority, no clout, no nothing. >> did you feel it was wrong

what they did? >> the study? doing the study? i don't. i don't. it was a time that we were saying, it was hard to get white babies and so this was an opportunity for two families to have a baby. >> what a terrible explanation for why they were doing the idea that, well, waee wante to make sure there were enough white babies to go around. so if there were two or three, why would you keep them together when you can spread the bounty? >> we knew that the families were competent parents. it was, like, there was no harm here. we are not, like, sperexperimen. that part never struck me as wrong, you know, so it looked like the babies are going to good families. >> i think they were hoping for an apology, in some way, shape or form. >> i would if -- i mean, i'm sorry. i'm sorry about it, but i was

not responsible, and unfortunately the people who created the study and who designed the study are probably not alive. >> reporter: after the meeting, sharon and vivian were blunt about their disappointment. >> she didn't seem sorry. she didn't seem to understand that what she did caused pain. >> reporter: still ahead, there is one last person from her secret past that sharon is longing to meet. >> hey. >> so hais not always easy. severe plaque psoriasis it's a long-distance run and you have the determination to keep going. humira has a proven track record of being prescribed for over ten years. it's the #1 prescribed biologic by dermatologists.

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and it's my new kfc smoky mountain barbecue. made by taking my freshly-prepared extra crispy fried chicken and coating it in a sweet and smoky barbecue. try it in a tenders basket at kfc. now just $4.99. it's finger lickin' good! >> reporter: undaunted by the falling out with the twin sister she hadn't known existed, sharon morello decides to search for her biological mother. >> hello. how are you? >> hey. >> reporter: this time, she brings in a professional. pam slaton. >> so i have been busy. >> reporter: family reunions are her specialty. >> so now i went back to your dna and sure enough whose family tree did that end up in? >> my twin sister. >> i'm, like, okay. now we're onto something. so i found your birth mom. >> okay. >> reporter: pam uses dna, social media and her gut instinct to track down sharon's

biological mother, but it's sharon's nerves that are the issue today. >> i'm afraid she doesn't know that we were split, and that's going to crush her. that's going to -- and i don't want to put that pain on her, you know? >> reporter: it's the type of call nobody is prepared to make or receive. >> the nerves. oh, my gosh. hi. my name is sharon. if you can, please give me a call back. >> reporter: the message worked. sharon and her birth mother began communicating on e-mail and facebook. her mother says she has never forgotten her twins. the mother shared the baby picture she got from the adoption agency with sharon and her sister. she had held onto those pictures all those years. she tells sharon she was not told in advance that her twins would be separated. >> when she called back to say, did you find a home for them? she was told -- yeah. we found homes for them. they're being split.

she was heartbroken. absolutely heartbroken. >> reporter: one day, they may meet in person. meanwhile -- >> hi. nice to meet you. >> reporter: sharon, doug and howard and their families all attended a screening of lori shineski's film. at least one member of the audience offered what none of the architects of the study never has. an apology. >> on behalf of humanity, i am so sorry for what happened. it's a horrible thing, you know? i would never have forgiven those people for what they did to you guys. >> i think that there is a cautionary tale there that you can never look at people like data. humans are not data. >> reporter: the twins lori discovered are grateful to her for restoring the truth about their birth. >> he is part of my life. i have a brother now. >> we're happy we met each other. pretty fortunate.

>> reporter: they are adamant such a study should never, ever be taken again. holding out their own lives as a warning to science. proof that the quest for knowledge should never come at the expense of our humanity. if you are adopted and for any reason think you might have been apart of that secret twin study, go to our website at abcnews.com for more information. thanks so much for watch. i'm elizabeth vargas. >> i'm david muir, and from all of us here at abc news and "20/20," thanks for watching. have a good night. have a good night. breaking news from yountville, a troubled veteran and three