Several years back now, one of my colleagues was very much into the genealogy thing. She had major problems I think with needing to find herself or where she fit in or whatever. She was very much pushing me to try one of the DNA genealogy testing services and I had to be very firm about not wanting to participate in it.
This is why. My sense of self has never been in question and I don’t need to attribute who or what I am to some people I’ve never met or culture I haven’t participated in or been a part of. I have been considered “other” my whole life by in groups who only wanted me to identify with the bits and pieces of my culture or personality that they approved of and I pretty much had to get over that at a young age in order to not feel inadequate or content with myself.
As a result these always seemed like services that over promise and under deliver and they ask for way more privileged information than I am comfortable with giving away to anyone (I was skeptical when my doctor wanted me to participate in cancer screening via DNA testing because the only angle I could see for wanting it that would be profitable to an insurance firm was to deny me coverage later). Every time something hits the media about a leak or mismanagement of customer data, I am vindicated in my belief that it’s not worth the price of admission.
It doesn’t even matter anymore if you have participated or not. If any of your family members have, they can correlate the DNA they have with written genealogy records and basically determine your race, ancestry, defects, etc.
So when the Nazis in power really want to purge for purity, they already have whatever list they need.
I don’t think giving them more information to use against you. Is a good thing. Think about it this way, even if the police have you on camera in an area where a crime is committed, that doesn’t mean you can’t still plead the fifth and request a lawyer (assuming you’re in the US). You aren’t required to further their investigation.
I also don’t trust these. There is very little regulation and protection. Case in point.
a layperson isnt going to find much use of inaccurate results of potential “genetic diseases” a geneticist will do that. so it
Thank you for sharing.
Who does ancestry.com get to run their sequencing? Because I have a number of relatives who did that. I don’t think it’s 23andme.
Everyone gets to run sequencing, but this post is about 23andme nearing bankruptcy, where they would run an auction for their records, including this genetic information of its customers.
Yeah; my point is: if 23andme is liquidating, other genetic labs likely aren’t too far behind, and I’d like some warning there too… especially since I have to convince other people to delete their data.
Not how or works, 23andMe uses Labcorp.
Well I’m glad I downloaded all my genome data and deleted it a few months ago. It was easy to do, there’s no excuse not to.
It’s cute you think that it’s actually deleted
Yes, it’s not worth them fucking around with various pii / gdpr fines. As someone who has worked with pii, we always took deletion requests seriously.
But like… deleting the data would lessen the sale price. Much easier to just delete your account and keep the data in an “anonymous” form. How are you (as the consumer) going to ever know if it’s actually deleted?
No lawyer / accountant is going to sign off on that. It would get flagged as fraud during due diligence and lower the price due to the risks of lawsuits and fines
If you read the fine print, they keep your sample data for 2 years after deletion.
So maybe they actually delete your email address, but the DNA data itself is still definitely there.
I felt weird about it when my dad used this 23andMe service. He was very privacy-conscious, so it was uncharacteristic for him. Now he’s dead. I wonder if there’s still any way to get it deleted.
You can do your own dna testing at home now anyways
You still have to send it somewhere, at home kits are just about collecting the sample not sequencing it.
Now imagine, the person you responded to, is allowed to vote.
They didn’t say what they were testing for. You can do a binary do you have DNA or not test to see if you are in fact a robot or not. All you need is soap and alcohol.
This thread made me look into the idea of DIYing it, and one of the search results I found looks like it legitimately is about actually doing the sequencing yourself:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/citizen-scientists-you-can-now-diy-your-own-dna-analysis/
$800 in 2016 was steep enough, but at the $1600 it apparently costs today I’m not sure it’s still within the realm of DIY, if it ever really was. I wonder if there are any cheaper competitors?
That allows visualization of PCRed product, which is a far cry from whole genome sequencing. You can visualize a target at a time with no sequence info. Using it for sequences would be extremely tedious and require a lot of runs.
Yup, I used to do PCR genotyping. 50 samples running the same setup would take me a whole 12-hour day at my lower end lab.
I can’t imagine having to do 50 different ones with 50 different templates and having to adjust each one. 😅 And that’s for 50 sequences. How many are there in a human?
About 25,000 coding sequences and a lot more non-coding.
More info plz
Dad, you’re drunk again!
