MetaChat - Have any other bunnies done the DNA testing thing?

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25 May 2017

Have any other bunnies done the DNA testing thing? I did the 23 and Me testing.
Being adopted I have no family medical history and that has always bothered me. Now I have some information. →[More:]

It tested for 40+ inherited conditions and while most would have shown up by now if I had both variants I did learn that I carry one variant for Cystic Fibrosis. I don't plan to have any more children so it's not a concern but I did talk with my son about it. My grand daughter should be tested so if she ever has children she knows whether or not this is a concern.

It also looks at 15 genetic risk factors. It can't tell me I'll never have Alzheimer's or Parkinson's and such but I now know I don't have the variants that are associated with a higher risk for developing them.

It's not life changing info but it's better than having no family medical info at all.

As for ancestry I was raised an Irish Catholic but I was born in a fairly French area to a mother with a very French name and my birth name was very French. Turns out I'm mostly Irish and Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese ). Turns out Iberian is common among the Irish on the west side of the southern part of Ireland. Basque fisherman seem to be the first to have inhabited the island about 10,000 years ago. Oddly, thats where my adopted family came from so I may be related to them by blood.

After that it's general northern European and about 4% native American.

It's interesting that most of the people I am related to on the site are from French speaking areas of Canada with very French names as it raises a lot of questions about who is 'pure laine'. Of course much will likely change over the years as more people from more areas participate.

I have connected with a few people but so far I have not found any information about my birth family. I know I have at least 2 older siblings from a moment when the government was making it easier for adoptees to get information. They ended the program just days after I got the first round of data.

For general safety and the fact that the lab is in the U.S. I paid with a disposable credit card and used a fake name and email.

post by: arse_hat at: 14:22 | 16 comments

That's really interesting arse_hat. I've been intrigued by this for a while, but read a report in the news today that put me off a bit - Ancestry.com's terms and conditions grant it exclusive ownership of your DNA in perpetuity. And as the site is based in Utah, I'm wondering (maybe I'm unnecessarily suspicious) if there's some plan to baptise everyone into the Mormon Church "for time and all eternity" via their DNA and some Mormon shenanigans.

posted by Senyar 25 May | 14:57

Yup. If you are going to do the testing keep your name address and financials hidden.

Some more about the potential issues here.

posted by arse_hat 25 May | 16:54

That's really cool! We recently did 23andme for my son, and I'd really like to do it for my daughter soon too (when she's old enough to agree to fill a vial with spit). They looks so different, so I'm curious to see how their ethnic make-up differs.

posted by amro 25 May | 19:34

I spat in the tube but never sent it back.

posted by brujita 25 May | 19:50

I'm wondering (maybe I'm unnecessarily suspicious) if there's some plan to baptise everyone into the Mormon Church "for time and all eternity" via their DNA and some Mormon shenanigans.

Yes, but if it makes you feel any better, they will be baptizing you by proxy (and marrying you, if you've never married) anyway - without your DNA.

My brother did Ancestry.com and I want to do it also. We found out we are very uninteresting - as my brother puts it, almost all our ancestry seems to be from the same 500-mile radius of Ireland/England - but it did result in getting connected to a lot of extended family whom we had never known about or corresponded with. Some had done our entire family's genealogical chart to quite a professional degree, making it easy to piggyback on their data.

posted by Miko 25 May | 21:15

brujita, what changed your mind?

Miko it's cool that you found family.

posted by arse_hat 25 May | 22:06

Not wanting others access to my dna...especially with the current us dictatorship.

posted by brujita 25 May | 22:50

I'd love to do the testing. My father and I have talked about it. He's 78 and doesn't care about the medical aspect of it -- it's all about finding out about his ancestry for him -- so he could do the National Geographic test, which is cheaper. I've told him for best results, he and his sister should do it (they are the only surviving members of their birth family), and either me and my sister and one of my brothers should do it.

posted by Orange Swan 27 May | 17:09

....and I've been lurking on the exmormon Reddit reading about their horrors.

posted by brujita 28 May | 03:56

My husband did it. He thought it was really interesting. The results debunked a lot of family lore.

posted by bearwife 28 May | 18:32

Also, brujita, this was well before orange fascist took power. I agree with you, frankly.

posted by bearwife 28 May | 18:33

The results debunked a lot of family lore.

Same for us - put paid to a lot of "we are part Native American" romance.

posted by Miko 28 May | 21:59

That's interesting Miko. Many first nations people refuse to take part in any DNA testing as they feel that you were raised an "Indian" or else you are not an "Indian". It is not a point of history but a fact of being. If at age 30 you found out that you are %75 Nish or Mohawk you would likely never be an "Indian" unless you had people claim you as family.

Recently Haida women of Haida Gwaii were found to be direct descendants of woman buried there 8 and 16 thousand years ago. The DNA testing was carefully controlled and the samples destroyed after matching.

posted by arse_hat 29 May | 00:10

I did the 23andme thing and didn't get any surprises. I'm basically half Celtic and half Anglo-Saxon which is what I thought already.

posted by octothorpe 29 May | 09:05

If at age 30 you found out that you are %75 Nish or Mohawk you would likely never be an "Indian" unless you had people claim you as family.

While this is one perspective that I know does exist, there are also interesting conversations going on within the Native world about people who were removed from their communities and didn't grow up within them, but who are nevertheless Indian - people like Army brats, who moved a lot, adopted and foster kids, and kids whose parents split up, leaving them with the non-Native parent. Those people often do want to seek and reconnect with their communities of origin, which is often received with reasonable positivity - so it isn't just how you grow up.

I think it's also true that some Native people have no interest in complicating the already complicated blood-quantum issue, mostly based on documentary evidence, with the dimension of potentially inflammatory DNA. The political and eonomic ramifications are too huge.

There's nothing simple about identity, that's for sure.

posted by Miko 29 May | 22:51

I went for it a few years ago, and then my sister signed up a year or two ago. It turns out she's actually my sister. Aside from a few possible cousins and confirmation on some disease/disorder markers/flags, I didn't turn up anything all that interesting, but it was fun to trawl through it all.

posted by sysinfo v2.0 01 June | 18:57

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