AncestryDNA/23andMe

Anyone do these home testing kits or consider buying them? I did. It changed my life forever. Caveat Emptor.


Back story (Reader's Digest version):


After I got back from my cousin's wedding in Peru, I was looking to do something constructive with my life (even though I was already On Air in New Hampshire at a Classic Rock and CHR station respectively). I had the travel bug after my excursion to South America and wanted to backpack the world. Hence, I was broke. So, traveling across the globe was out of the question. But I needed something to fill the void here at home. I thought about leaving radio to go back to school and go into the food service industry. That idea was short lived.

Finally, I was on a date in Boston and we got to talking about genealogy. My date asked me who I was and I couldn't give a straight answer. Because I was never given a straight answer as far as my family roots were concerned. My dad was always Scottish and Italian and my mom was 100% Aryan and Anglo-Saxon. Which I could never let stand as an answer as my mom was (as later confirmed through extensive research) a woman of color. But there were several reasons why my mom's family passed but that's for later.

I finally convinced my mom that I was going to take an AncestryDNA and 23andMe test. I was one of those who thought that ethnicity testing was as legit as the commercials promised. Spoiler alert. You won't be trading in the lederhosen for a kilt. But you will find out long, kept, family secrets.

I thought that my ancestral research project would take a few months and then I'd get back to figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Little did I know that this would take up my life and change my identity forever. Without getting into the insane details, I found out that I was DC (Donor Conceived) when my since divorced parents were having trouble conceiving on their own. They trusted a fertility doctor who told my folks that these donors were med students. Mine was far from it. I was barred access from knowing who my biological family was. My donor was given my mom's info and my info but I couldn't know anything about him.

So, for months, I didn't know who my bio family was. Then, my bio uncle - who's not a smart man - ratted his brother out by going on AncestryDNA against his brother's wishes. When I used the info to track down my bio father, my bio father (who is German, Austrian, Turkish and Syrian) lied about it and had used my mom's family info to build a fake family tree on Ancestry. He told me that he was given up for adoption. Which was insane, because this guy did look like my mom's uncle. So, I had my mom test and it turned out that this guy was caught in the lie of his life.

Then I heard from his lawyer and was threatened with a lawsuit if I had threatened to tell my college-aged half-siblings. Spoiler alert. I told them in a hand-written letter and nothing has happened so far. Told them that while my bio father and I might not see each other ever, that I was around if they ever wanted to see me. Even my bio aunt who I tracked down said that my bio father would brag that he would walk into fertility clinics and never get caught because these files were anonymous.

Long-story short, I found a bunch of grown half-siblings with spouses and children of their own and we're getting to know each other. Thanks to the power of autosomal DNA matching. It's a touchy subject, but I'm glad that I'm able to talk about something non-radio related.

But I'm interested to hear some of the thoughts of everyone here. Would you do the spit test even if it meant learning a painful truth?

Nope. I don't have any reason to suspect that my heritage is other than what my parents said.

And even if I found out otherwise I don't think I would actually reach out to my biological siblings. You haven't done them a service by writing to them, you've just created turmoil in their lives.

PTBoardOp94 said:

Nope. I don't have any reason to suspect that my heritage is other than what my parents said.

And even if I found out otherwise I don't think I would actually reach out to my biological siblings. You haven't done them a service by writing to them, you've just created turmoil in their lives.

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See? I'd like to know how this was my fault? Should I be grateful that someone handed down 50% of their genetics (lineage, trauma, traits) anonymously? I'd like to hear your piffy retort. Because I've heard it all before:

-You don't deserve to know
-You should be grateful that you're alive
-The best part of you came dripping out of a cup
-It's a legal document that promised him privacy (it's actually not; look at the agreement again)

And yet, ad hominem attacks aside, I have not heard one person who has made a valid argument for why sperm donation should remain private. If you or anyone else has something valid to say other than "you ruined their lives," then I'm all ears.

Also, I didn't ruin anything. The one who caused turmoil is the one who walked into a fertility clinic and fathered a child for a few bucks.

I'm with PTBoredOp94 on this. That said, they sell the one thing that makes you uniquely you in all of world history, the only one of you that ever was or ever will be, to the insurance industry and anybody else who wants to pay for it...and you paid them to do it.

I personally would not take one of these tests as at present the security of your data is somewhere
between really crappy and non-existent.

There have been reports that these companies routinely share DNA data with the government.
From there it's a short hop and a jump to sharing it with your insurance company. If you turn up
with any markers for cancer or genetic disease you could find yourself paying sky-high rates if they'll
sell it to you at all.

Silkie said:

I'm with PTBoredOp94 on this. That said, they sell the one thing that makes you uniquely you in all of world history, the only one of you that ever was or ever will be, to the insurance industry and anybody else who wants to pay for it...and you paid them to do it.

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So where are you having trouble ascertaining basic empathy of someone who is Donor Conceived? Is it where you are uneducated in terms of what it's like to be brought into the world this way? Or do you feel that anonymous sperm donors deserve all the protection in the world from being identified? Because not all DC adults want a relationship with their bio parent. Nor is there any ulterior motive to tracking down our bio parents. A right to not wanting to be contacted is different from not being identified as the biological parent. Which is what they are.

That's one ridiculous fear debunked. Here's another. The government isn't using DNA to spy on you anymore than when you go on social media and post an opinion or a status update. The only way the government can use your DNA against you in a court of law is if you're a serial killer. GEDmatch, the website where you upload your 23andMe and AncestryDNA to help find matches through close relatives, was useful in helping LE track down a cold case in California last year. My advice? Don't commit a crime and you won't have any issue with the courts using your DNA against you.

Unless you wear rubber gloves, your DNA is on everything you touch. Science doesn't care about what you believe.

frankberry said:

I have an issue with these DNA testing places. My sister had her DNA tested and got some strange (and, I believe, false) results.
The website warned her that another sample of her DNA might not bring the same results. If that's the case, it's not accurate.

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Ethnicity testing is a long ways off in terms of accuracy. As mentioned in my OP, you won't be trading in that lederhosen for a kilt. But if you wanted to find out a long, lost, relative who might've been given up for adoption, then that's where Autosomal DNA comes in handy.

Say, you're 25% Irish but your test results come back at 8% Irish. Here's the good news. You're still Irish. Or maybe not? The thing about genealogy is that sometimes people lie about out-of-wedlock events. That's why you don't want to always follow the green leaves on your Ancestry tree. What's on the birth record and what's actually happened might be two entirely different stories.

But you're not going to tell your ethnicity through these sites. Nor will you find useful genetic information. You have to do the research and it's a four-alarm family effort. If you have family that you can ask and feel comfortable doing so, then tell them that you're researching your tree and something in my DNA results (autosomal) didn't look right. As they say about genealogy, it annoys the living and disturbs the dead.

A friend of mine did one of those testing things. I don't know which one. It came back Polish and Irish, which he knew, but also a very tiny percentage came back Middle Eastern. He has no idea where that came from. He thought he was more Irish than Polish, but the test showed he was about equal parts Irish and Polish.

I don't know if I can justify spending that money. I know I'm English, German, Greek, and French Canadian. But I heard from my parents I may have something else in me as well. I don't know if I care enough to do the test.

jdmonairinnh said:

And yet, ad hominem attacks aside, I have not heard one person who has made a valid argument for why sperm donation should remain private. If you or anyone else has something valid to say other than "you ruined their lives," then I'm all ears.

Also, I didn't ruin anything. The one who caused turmoil is the one who walked into a fertility clinic and fathered a child for a few bucks.

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Well, that was an unexpectedly aggressive reply. All I said is I wouldn't do the same as you and I get accused of an ad hominem attack?

You're the one who characterized your discoveries as a "painful truth", and you subjected yourself to that pain. Then you also decided that you should subject a bunch of people you had never met (your half-siblings) to that discovery.

I get the strong impression that your experience has turned you against sperm banks in general. Which I must admit, is a take I don't believe I have ever heard before. So thanks for sharing your story.

PTBoardOp94 said:

Well, that was an unexpectedly aggressive reply. All I said is I wouldn't do the same as you and I get accused of an ad hominem attack?

You're the one who characterized your discoveries as a "painful truth", and you subjected yourself to that pain. Then you also decided that you should subject a bunch of people you had never met (your half-siblings) to that discovery.

I get the strong impression that your experience has turned you against sperm banks in general. Which I must admit, is a take I don't believe I have ever heard before. So thanks for sharing your story.

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This is the most passive aggressive response that I have ever received regarding sperm donation. And I think that it's because you're starting to get it through your skull that you shouldn't blame the victim. That maybe walking into a fertility clinic and ANONYMOUSLY creating a child is morally wrong. That maybe withholding the recipients of your seed your name and family medical history is morally flawed.

I subjected myself to this pain? Not the person who walked into a fertility clinic who wanted to make a few bucks secretly fathering a child? It's like blaming a woman who was sexually assaulted because she was wearing a short skirt and not the assailant. What I started to accuse you of walking into a fertility clinic and selling your seed? Better tell your family to stay off those sites.

DavidEduardo said:

DNA tests are as accurate as the data base the results are compared to. It's a pure statistical play.

All the tests can do is compare the subject DNA to concentrations of similar traits in today's populations.

If lots and lots of people from the Ireland yield certain traits to some of yours, then chances are you have Irish heritage. But some of that is influenced by how many people from each area of the planet have been tested.

So if nearly nobody from the northeastern Iberian Peninsula has been tested, it is hard to tell whether you might be Irish but with a heritage going back to the Celtic migration from present day Galicia to southwestern Ireland. But if the database picks up more sample from that area, such a tie can be established... but only to the extent of the correlation of DNA in current populations with yours.

So, in the US, it is pretty easy to spot migrations of persons from Ireland, the UK and much of western Europe as those are common origins for huge numbers of Americans and there is also a good sample of people still living in those place. But if your heritage is from the islands of the South Pacific or parts of China, for example, there is likely a very small current population database to compare with... so you'll be told "Asia" rather than "China" and "Oceania" rather than "Somoa".

The more people any one service tests, the better the results. I've found, by checking back with one of the firms offering such data, that the reports are updated rather often and that, in my case, the strength of my Iberian ancestry becomes more precise.

Of course, I have opted out from finding out about actual living people I may somehow be related to. I'm not obsessed with finding lost family sheep, as I have plenty of real friends and associates.

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But like I said before, the science isn't there yet in terms of testing for lineage. My mom's family came to Puerto Rico and Cuba from the Canary Islands. Her Iberian percentages was around 11% (She's roughly 15%). AncestryDNA did a recent upgrade. Bye-bye Iberian Peninsula and hello 2% Basque. Never mind the fact that her Senegalese and Moroccan lineage was completely erased with the update.

It's not an exact science. Autosomal DNA is spot on. You're matched with other users based on a certain number of cM's (or centimorgans). This is what genealogists go by when tracking down lost relatives. They also use birth records, family bibles, and other artifacts. They never use a Ethnicity Origin pie chart. No genealogist does. It's fruitless.

I don't know how else to explain it you guys but this article goes into great detail as to why you can't tell your ethnicity through a spit test. There's analytical and statistical data that shows how one shouldn't do this.
https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-heritage-and-probab-1820932637

This quote stood out in the article and I think best explains why ethnicity testing is a form of pseudoscience.

“These companies are asking people to pay for something that is at best trivial and at worst astrology,” said Rutherford. “The biggest lesson we can teach people is that DNA is probabilistic and not deterministic.”

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I don't know what finding family sheep means or what having real friends and associates has to do with anything. But that's definitely your call. I personally enjoy having my half-siblings and nieces and nephews in my life.

jdmonairinnh said:

This is the most passive aggressive response that I have ever received regarding sperm donation. And I think that it's because you're starting to get it through your skull that you shouldn't blame the victim. That maybe walking into a fertility clinic and ANONYMOUSLY creating a child is morally wrong. That maybe withholding the recipients of your seed your name and family medical history is morally flawed.

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I have concluded none of these things.

What I have concluded is that fathering a child via a sperm bank is no different, morally, than fathering a child in a one-night stand with the intention of not being in the mother's life. While the mother might know her child's father's name, it is virtually impossible that the conversation before getting busy would have included her taking notes of his family medical history. And it is pretty common for the child conceived in a one-night stand to be misled about their real father, for example in case of an affair.

I subjected myself to this pain?

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Of course you subjected yourself to this. You didn't have to pay 23 and Me or Ancestry to find out the truth.

Not the person who walked into a fertility clinic who wanted to make a few bucks secretly fathering a child? It's like blaming a woman who was sexually assaulted because she was wearing a short skirt and not the assailant.

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Since you seem to be looking for someone to blame for your existence: Try your birth family. That's where the money paid to your birth father, that you apparently consider immoral came from.

Tick tock...your secret is coming out soon

PTBoardOp94 said:

What I have concluded is that fathering a child via a sperm bank is no different, morally, than fathering a child in a one-night stand with the intention of not being in the mother's life. While the mother might know her child's father's name, it is virtually impossible that the conversation before getting busy would have included her taking notes of his family medical history. And it is pretty common for the child conceived in a one-night stand to be misled about their real father, for example in case of an affair. Since you seem to be looking for someone to blame for your existence: Try your birth family. That's where the money paid to your birth father, that you apparently consider immoral came from.

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Which of the follow describes you:
A) Anonymous Sperm Donor worried that your family might pay for these testing kits
B) Angry Incel
C) Men's Rights Activist
D) All Of The Above

If I were a woman, I would think you're unattractive. Guys like you who defend this practice and think it's okay to sell their sperm secretly and feel that the child should be grateful in my opinion are unsexy. I'm not going to get into this with you anymore. You sound like a misogynistic, creepy person with a lack of empathy. What you said was "blame your mother and not the donor." This is what anonymous sperm donors say on social media when these articles are posted.

Of course you subjected yourself to this. You didn't have to pay 23 and Me or Ancestry to find out the truth.

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I hope your first cousin or sibling goes on 23andMe and/or AncestryDNA and shares your past occupation. I hope all twenty-four of your children show up at your door looking for you to co-sign something.

jdmonairinnh said:

What you said was "blame your mother and not the donor."

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I'm aware of what I said, and I meant it. People who spend thousands of dollars to access a market generally are the reason that market exists, whether the product is blood diamonds, crack, or sperm.

If you think that makes me an angry men's rights activist or whatever other labels you applied, that's your problem.

DavidEduardo said:

As I said, these tests don't show who your ancestors are. They do not directly trace relationships. They principally trace geographic origin and identify populations one has commonality with.

The more data on current populations that gets into the systems of these companies the more accurate the co-relationships can be identified. This is basic statistics.

If an area of the world has certain characteristics that are matched nowhere else, and someone who is tested has the same characteristics, it's likely that that person's heritage includes that area.



Several of the services offer to identify via mutual consent those persons who have enough matches to be actual familial relationships. That means you can find a 5th cousin somewhere. If you go back just a half dozen generations in any family, you find an amazingly huge number of people you may be related to but who share no commonality in the present. I don't have any desire to find people whose only relationship to me was based on a family about 10 generations ago that lived in Plymouth, MA, in 1637.

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David, I like and respect you. The way you savage non-industry professionals on this board is a work of art. I'm so jealous of how you take people down it's not even funny. Nobody knows more about radio than you. Maybe Scott Fybush. But that's pretty much it.

However, I strongly disagree with your notion that Ethnicity/Lineage/Ancestral testing is an exact science. It's not even a matter of analytics and statistics. It's a form of astrology. That's why I urge you to be careful. Because trusting a DNA pie chart is no different than Karen who googles her research on whether or not vaccinations cause autism. Or when someone watches Chernobyl and becomes an expert on Nuclear Science.

When researching my great-grandfather who was a slave, I came across a common relative who had NO African lineage in her pie-chart and yet she was as black as could be. And had family records to prove it.

https://www.livescience.com/63997-dna-ancestry-test-results-explained.html

And I also think you misunderstood. I'm not interested in hanging out with distant cousins that I haven't met either. Just any half-siblings that I have yet to meet. If they want to be in my life, then I have time

jdmonairinnh said:

So where are you having trouble ascertaining basic empathy of someone who is Donor Conceived? Is it where you are uneducated in terms of what it's like to be brought into the world this way? Or do you feel that anonymous sperm donors deserve all the protection in the world from being identified? Because not all DC adults want a relationship with their bio parent. Nor is there any ulterior motive to tracking down our bio parents. A right to not wanting to be contacted is different from not being identified as the biological parent. Which is what they are.

That's one ridiculous fear debunked. Here's another. The government isn't using DNA to spy on you anymore than when you go on social media and post an opinion or a status update. The only way the government can use your DNA against you in a court of law is if you're a serial killer. GEDmatch, the website where you upload your 23andMe and AncestryDNA to help find matches through close relatives, was useful in helping LE track down a cold case in California last year. My advice? Don't commit a crime and you won't have any issue with the courts using your DNA against you.

Unless you wear rubber gloves, your DNA is on everything you touch. Science doesn't care about what you believe.

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My post contains none of the topics in your reply.