DNA Testing and Privacy (Behind the scenes at the 23andMe Lab)

A special thanks to Dr. Neil Lamb at the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology. A major mission of Hudson Alpha is to educate the public and promote genomics literacy. I talked to many scientists about Genotyping but Dr. Lamb's ability to break down the complexity of the human genome is what finally brought it home for me.

I was concerned about what actually happens with my genetic information when submitted to 23andMe, so when they approached me and asked me if I wanted to make a video I decided to investigate it top to bottom. Visiting the Lab and learning that their data is contractually isolated from the sample and the fact that it's not the entire DNA sequence being sent to 23andMe headquarters passed my smell test and satisfied my privacy concerns. My wife spoke with professors and industry leaders from around the country and learned about the benefits of a future of medicine based on genomics. My wife, Dr. Lamb, and 23andMe all independently stressed the importance of understanding exactly what the results of the health genotype testing mean by consulting your (well informed) doctor. In a nutshell, the results don't provide deterministic results, but a probabilistic indicator based on historical data. Many other factors play a huge role in how your body works.

I did mine with ancestry as I was looking for my birth parents. Ethnicity results were spot on match to my non identifying info stated. I think people sometimes forget there have been various migrations, wars Etc that can skew the expected results. Factor in unknown adoptions, affairs, it’s totally possible to get unexpected results.
BTW, my search angel found birth father in a week, verified birth mother.

Just curious, by paper records, do you mean the indexed records, such as birth, death, marriage, military, etc? Because those are actually compiled by 3rd parties, ancestry is just the clearinghouse for them. Another site I use is familysearch.org. They have the same records and more. I found a marriage record there for a family member of my husband in Mexico.
If you mean the trees, oh yes, they are a problem, but since they belong to the members who submit them, not much ancestry can do. But yeah, women giving birth to their grandchildren, men fathering children before they’re born etc. The copy and paste function makes it easy for sloppy research to be propagated
Then there are folks like me, the skeletons that fall out of the closet. I found myself in a tree, but because living people are kept private, I wasn’t sure. And he had me marked as male. I did contact him and said, is that me? BTW, I’m female. Lol. He was exceedingly gracious, invited me to my tree, I invited him and told him my fathers name, my place of birth, etc.
Which leads to generational societies. I could probably find an ancestor who would be my ticket to dar, if I wished, which would then be my ticket to my original birth certificate. But why? It seems like a snobby clique anyway. I think they don’t like DNA, like many,because too many bastards like myself start falling out of the woodwork. GGG grandma wasn’t so perfect after all. I’ll stick with being a direct descendant of Simpson Squire Black of Gaston county NC.

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