Oh the surprises you find when you get your DNA tested to see where your ancestors came from...
Oh the surprises you find when you get your DNA tested to see where your ancestors came from...
DNS: Dangerous Truths
Sixty Minutes recently had a program about Ancestry.com and 23 and Me discussing the dangers of providing your DNA to them for testing. The program included a memorandum that DOD sent to all servicemembers cautioning them to not do so.
Too late. Younger son, Alex, gave wife, Annette, and me a membership for Christmas a couple of years ago. We, of course, spit in the test tube and mailed them in. A few weeks later, we get graphic pie charts showing our genetic heritage. No surprise for Annette, close to one hundred percent Northern European, i.e. German ancestry.
I, on the other hand, had quite a surprise. For generations, at least the four generations that I’m acquainted with, my dad’s family believed there to be American Indian ancestry in our blood lines. One only had to take a quick look at my Great-grandmother Myrtle Bensken to believe it. Sitting in profile in her rocking chair with her white hair pulled back in a bun, dressed in a calico dress, she had to be part-Indian.
Lo and behold, the pie chart showed zero American Indian DNA. Ancestry.com is kind enough to continue sending me lots of emails with updates of second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth cousins, as well as updates on my genetic ancestry, most of which get hit with the delete key, but still no American Indian ancestry.
Even though many people, on first meeting me, think I’m Italian, wrong again. According to Ancestry, I’m ninety-three percent from the UK and Ireland and seven per cent from Norway. Turns out not all those English, Irish, Scots, Welsh and Norwegians are fair-skinned and blue-eyed.
All these folks paying money to find out where their DNA ancestors are from is useful to law enforcement, too. Plenty of stories out there about how a law enforcement agency has obtained DNA evidence from the scene of a crime and by using the DNA database of one of the genealogical services has managed to track down the culprit by cross referencing the DNA through cousins of cousins of cousins. My “C” in general studies biology doesn’t qualify me to know how it works, but DNA experts in multiple legal cases have assured me it does, in fact, work, with technical explanations that cause my eyes to glaze over.
Sixty Minutes now tells us that the real reason these companies exist is not to provide us with information on our genetic heritage, nor to set up the genealogical charts, although they’re certainly glad to charge us for those services. Rather, the real reason they exist is to build a DNA database large enough to be useful to drug companies for their research into new drugs. The companies then sell your DNA data, which has now become their data to the drug companies.
Fascinating! Who was smart enough to figure out how to get people to pay a company to give that company information, through samples of their body fluids or tissue, so the company could then make money selling the information from those samples!
Now, of course, the Chinese government is siphoning off all the information they can buy or steal for their nefarious purposes.
There’s got to be a great “Matrix” science fiction storyline here, but the problem is, it’s true.
Since I’m a military retiree, I didn’t get the DOD memo. It wouldn’t have been timely anyway. None of which answers the question of how a swarthy skinned, dark-haired, big nosed guy could be English, Irish, Welsh, Scots, and Norwegian. Nor why the Chinese government cares.
Remember the Elizabeth Warren brouhaha about her American Indian ancestry? Turned out she was right, just barely, but right. I sure am glad I never proclaimed my family legend.
At any rate, send me the $49 instead of Ancestry.com and I’ll spit in a tube for you. We’ll really confuse the drug companies and the Chinese government! I even promise not to send you emails every week announcing the latest discovery in your family tree… or bush… or thicket.
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© William L. Enyart, 2021
Podcast available at: www.billenyart.com
E-mail: bill@billenyart.com