Free Republic

23andMe was co-founded by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki — YouTube is owned by Google.Seeing as how Google has been trying to get into the pharmaceutical business, is 23andMe an extension of that designed to profile individuals and target them with new drugs?A man and his wife decided to test the accuracy of 23andMe’s at-home DNA testing kit by sending in a saliva sample collected from their pet lizard. What they found is that the whole thing is a sham.In the following video, the man explains how after three months of waiting, he received anomalous results suggesting that his pet lizard...

SACRAMENTO — The Golden State Killer raped and murdered victims all across the state of California in an era before Google searches and social media, a time when the police relied on shoe leather, not cellphone records or big data. But it was technology that got him. The suspect, Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was arrested by the police on Tuesday. Investigators accuse him of committing more than 50 rapes and 12 murders. Investigators used DNA from crime scenes and plugged that genetic profile into a commercial online genealogy database. They found distant relatives of Mr. DeAngelo’s and traced their DNA...

A01 Twenty years after DNA fingerprints were first admitted by American courts as a way to link suspects to crime scenes, a new and very different class of genetic test is approaching the bench. Rather than simply proving, for example, that the blood on a suspect's clothes does or does not match that of a murder victim, these "second generation" DNA tests seek to shed light on the biological traits and psychological states of the accused. In effect, they allow genes to "testify" in ways never before possible, in some cases resolving long-standing legal tangles but in others raising new...

Alan Moldawer's adopted twins had always thought of themselves as white. But when it came time [for]college, Moldawer thought it might be worth investigating the origins of their slightly tan-tinted skin, with a DNA kit.. The results, designating the boys 9 percent Native American and 11 percent northern African, arrived too late for the admissions process. But Moldawer... says they could be useful in obtaining financial aid. ... Many scientists criticize ancestry tests as promising more than they can deliver...Given the speculative nature, it seems unlikely that schools and other institutions will embrace them. But that has not stopped many...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Baton Rouge hospital, hoping to get to the bottom of an office prank, is ordering 25 employees to undergo DNA testing or be terminated. Leaders at Woman's Hospital say a man who works in Building Operations returned from several weeks off to find that someone had placed urine in his toolbox. After hearing of the incident, hospital administrators sent a memo to 25 employees who also work there telling them that DNA testing would be done unless someone came forward admitting guilt. Since no one came forward, the hospital said the DNA testing will...

KHAR, Bajaur Agency: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States may not have achieved its prime target, the No 2 Al Qaeda leader Egyptian, Dr Aiman Al Zawahri, but the January 13 air attack on Damadola village in Bajaur Agency has certainly left a deep psychological impact on the tribesmen. The tribesmen believe that the attack was a warning not to host ‘foreign guests’ in the future. “We spent the next day and night in fear and when we heard planes we run out of our homes to avoid a second tragedy,” 35-year-old Sadiqullah Khan, whose house was...

January 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON — U.S. officials are still holding out hope they killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, in an airstrike in Pakistan. Sources say American officials are anxiously awaiting DNA test results to determine if the Friday strike killed the Egyptian doctor, al Qaeda's second-in-command. Tissue samples taken from people killed in the strike are being flown to Quantico, Va., where the FBI will test them, sources say. [snip] But privately, sources say the strike was based on strong intelligence that Zawahiri would be among the guests at a dinner party there, and that he...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - New DNA tests sought by death row inmate Kevin Cooper failed to exonerate him of the 1983 murders of four people, a prosecutor said Friday. The tests indicated that hairs found on three of the victims were likely their own, which undermines Cooper's theory that other people committed the murder, Deputy Attorney General Holly Wilkens said. Cooper was sentenced to die in 1985 for killing Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 11-year-old friend Christopher Hughes, who was sleeping over at the Ryens' Chino Hills home. Eight-year-old Joshua Ryen had his throat slit but...

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) - Coalition forces searched caves and blasted bunkers Thursday in the Shah-e-Kot Valley abandoned by al-Qaida forces after heavy U.S. airstrikes, as forensics experts conducted DNA tests to make certain none of the terrorist organization's senior leaders was among the dead. Neither Osama bin Laden nor Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was believed to be in the Shah-e-Kot valley March 2 when U.S. forces and their Afghan allies launched the biggest offensive of the 5-month-old war. But some corpses were so badly mangled that Maj. Gen. Frank L. Hagenbeck ordered the tests - just to be sure....