Ancestral DNA Testing
Privacy concerns always pop up whenever people talk about genetic testing (many times acting as if genetic testing would violate privacy more than electronic eavesdropping or identity theft). So it amazes me how many people are willing to submit their DNA for genealogy purposes but would balk at potentially using DNA testing for other more legitimate reasons, such as for improving their health.
Anyway, Carolina A. Miranda of Time Magazine is the latest to delve into her ancestry using ancestral DNA tests.
Today at least half a dozen companies will, for about $200 a pop, take your spittle, analyze the heck out of it and tell you who and what you are. The tests are popular among adoptees, armchair genealogists and high school seniors praying that a link to some underrepresented ethnic group will help get them into the Ivies. Already a card-carrying minority, I thought a test might help me figure out a thing or two about my forebears –and my mixed-up identity.
It doesn’t really matter that her test results were contradictory. What matters more is her nonchalant attitude towards the whole process. It’s just as I said before, most people do or think what they want regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.
Technorati Tags: genealogy, dna tests, genetics, genes, dna, ancestry, ancestral dna testing, time, time magazine, disease, illness, health
I found out when I was 44 that I had been adopted at about 6 weeks. I have been a historian and anthropologist. How about guessing how tramautic that was for me. It was like a nuclear shock bomb went off. I had lost my heritage. Not my history … my HERITAGE. If there is a way to tell where I came from, and who my ancestors were, I would have no qualms about finding out. I never expect anything, therefore I am never disappointed in what I get or find out. Nothing can be as devasting as learning you were adopted … to many people like myself anyway. I cannot afford to be tested, but know in my heart the difference it would make to me. To ACTUALLY KNOW what ethnicity I am, what nationality, who my ancestors were and anything else that could be provided. I know the prices for testing are coming down, but I barely scrape by now … and wish there were a way I could find out now … and have a kind of closure, and pride in who I am NOW.