Experts Outline Ethics Issues With Use of Genealogy DNA to Solve Crimes
I recently wrote about two different “cold cases” where
murderers allegedly have been identified and arrested by using
information found on the publicly-available genealogy DNA site at GEDmatch.com.
Privacy
advocates and many others have since questioned the legality of using
the information for law enforcement purposes. Admittedly, the
information is publicly available for all to see. The genealogists who
contributed the information did so willingly and presumably gave
permission for the family DNA to be available to all. However, the
relatives of the uploading genealogists may or may not have given
permission for THEIR personal DNA information to be
made available to the public. After all, it isn’t the DNA of any one
individual; it is indeed the family’s DNA information. Not all family
members have agreed to having that information made available to
genealogists, law enforcement personnel, insurance companies, and
worldwide hackers alike.
In the past, a court order was required for law enforcement personnel
to legitimately invade the privacy of an individual or a family. The
public information made available on GEDmatch
seems to circumvent the legal protections of having a judge review the
intent of law enforcement personnel. Are we giving up some of our
liberties and privacy protections by making such information available?
There is also an issue of having law enforcement personnel use the
information only for legitimate criminal investigations. One of the
alleged murderers, commonly referred to as the Golden State Killer,
reportedly was a uniformed police officer at the time he allegedly
committed the rapes and murders. If GEDmatch had been available, would
he have used the information on the web site to avoid identification and
arrest? Indeed, GEDmatch theoretically could be used by murderers and
others to evade capture.
You can find dozens of online article questioning the wisdom of
making such information public. I’ll point to one such article by
Carolyn Crist on the Reuters News Service web site at https://reut.rs/2szWHUq
as one that describes the pros and cons of the issue. However, you can
find many more articles about this issue by starting at any
general-purpose Web search engine.
Perhaps the best quote of the article is, “‘Think carefully before
uploading your genealogy data,’” said Benjamin Berkman, who heads the
section on the ethics of genetics and new technologies at the National
Institutes of Health’s Department of Bioethics in Bethesda, Maryland.
‘We’re not saying it’s unduly risky or a bad idea, but be comfortable
with the idea that police may use your information to solve crimes
before you sign up for these services.'”
My thanks to the many newsletter readers who sent me links to articles about these issues.
—> Ok help me here. How could this be done? Even theoretically?
Easily. First, any criminal who has some knowledge of DNA probably
knows his own DNA information. He then could monitor GEDmatch to see if
close matches are ever added, meaning that law enforcement could close
in on him. It would be easy for him to decide when it was time to get
out of town and go into hiding.
Next, the criminal could monitor GEDmatch and any possible future
services with similar publicly-identifiable data to see if a relative,
even a distant relative, uploaded similar DNA information. It would then
be easy for the criminal to contact the relative and convince him to
remove the DNA information uploaded because of the risks associated with
putting family DNA information visible to the public. The criminal
might cite real risks (and there are several) or he might make up some
story, inventing some plausible-sounding risks, and convince the
relative to remove the listing. That would help the criminal to remain
invisible to law enforcement.
Are these risks probable? I doubt it. But they certainly are
theoretically possible. I am sure there are other scenarios that I
haven’t yet thought of.
Next, there was an earlier story of a year or so ago where police
used a publicly-available DNA database and they identified the wrong
person! See https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/investigators-dna-from-genealogy-site-caught-serial-killer/2018/04/26/a8197258-49b8-11e8-8082-105a446d19b8_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.32c5b8106336 for the details. The innocent man eventually was determined to not be the killer and was freed.
There was a somewhat similar, even earlier, case in New Orleans where
police did a DNA match on a publicly-available DNA database and then
identified the wrong man. The “wrong man” apparently was a relative of
the real murderer, not the culprit.
All that is described at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3510568/Law-enforcement-investigators-seek-private-DNA-databases.html
Law enforcement is never 100% accurate. Like most other human
endeavors, occasional mistakes are made. Is that enough to prohibit the
use of certain investigative tools? I don’t know. I’ll leave that to the
lawyers and judges to decide.
Please can you post a reliable source that says that the
Oregon man was actually arrested. I am not aware of any such arrest,
only that he and his daughter volunteered to help that police with the
case.
OK. I thought you were theoretically suggesting a criminal
could manipulate the data at Gedmatch to avoid identification. I was
having a hard time swallowing that idea.
I am not at all convinced that the arguments advanced so far
are particularly cogent or well-considered. The discovery of relatives
of criminals on GEDmatch is not evidence. The actual evidence that
provides probable cause for an arrest is the genetic match detected
between a sample from a crime scene and a sample recovered from an
individual whose identity was suggested by GEDmatch. After probable
cause is established and an arrest is made, there is still no “evidence”
admissible in criminal proceedings unless the crime scene sample
matches (by expert testimony) a sample obtained from the person who was
arrested, under appropriate judicial approval. All of the safeguards
for evidence and due process still apply, and will be determined by law
and precedent.
The more important consideration, I think, has to do with the ethics
of keeping and revealing secrets. The secrets of the criminal, when
discovered, should clearly be revealed in the interest of society as a
whole. The classic little book by Sissela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics
of Concealment and Revelation (1983) still applies, and is still
required reading for any genealogist interested in contemporary
families.
Indeed. There are people who feel compelled to object to
anything that law enforcement does on principle; that doesn’t mean they
have logic to back up their gut feelings. I agree that objections
presented so far fall short of “cogent and well-considered.”
This, in particular, seems wrong: “it isn’t the DNA of any one individual; it is indeed the family’s DNA information.”
No. It is the DNA of one individual, and none of my family
members have a right to oblige me not to reveal my own DNA. Suggesting
that because their DNA sequence might be revealed by my
revealing my own it is wrong to reveal my own is like suggesting I not
use my address—or, indeed, surname—because someone might guess they live
there too or have a similar name.
Think about WWII Germany, when ALL Germans were required to
carry books showing their genealogy back several generations to show
that they had no Jewish blood. Imagine that today with your DNA or your
relatives DNA database showing you did have Jewish blood, no hiding it,
even if you didn’t know about it. Catching old murder suspects this
way is fine, even a wonderful thing, but it is a slippery slope that
could eventually lead to the Germany scenario. When you voluntarily give
your DNA to Gedmatch or even the paid sites you are also giving your
relatives DNA, even relatives you do not even know, and you are giving
it without their permission, clearly an invasion of their privacy. This
is definitely an ethics question the courts will have to answer in the
near future.
All the argument about DNA and Germany applies almost as much
to my family tree. Should that be forbidden because it reveals my
cousin’s ancestry? If we reject the DNA load because it’s not just my
DNA but my cousin’s as well, then we should surely reject the family
tree also, as it goes close enough to my cousins that any competent
genealogists could identify them and therefore their ancestry.
Paranoia has set in. How long do we live on this plant?
History does teach us a few good things but the future is yet to be
told. Where will we be when biometrics may be used on identification or
passports? I for one am glad the police may have solved some old cold
case files. As suggested by others, I would expect the investigation
would now collect more evidence to clearing indicate the culprit is the
correct person.
I am more concerned about the media and how someone is painted as a
criminal even before all the facts are in or someone has their day in
court. Once the media convicts you, even if you are proven as innocent
the damage may be done and the individual’s life will likely never be
the same.
Genealogy has similar issues. When researching an individual we often
find bits and pieces. We might try to come to a conclusion about the
individual but we really don’t have all the facts or history. The time
period we all live in past/present can affect what individuals may do.
All sorts of people, businesses and the Government make
statements about how our privacy and personal information are to be kept
safe and confidential. There are, after all, laws about that. And yet,
it is not safe. HIPPA regulations are supposed to make sure all of your
medical information and records are confidential (and you have to go
through some interesting things to get your own information) and yet…the
Dr.’s office managed to mail out my compleat set of records which
vanished into the US Mail (no tracking just addressed a packet and
“poof” gone- so sorry, too bad, you have to ask for another set- but our
computers are down it will take a while). Ah, yes, all of this stuff is
now being either entered directly into formats for reports on computers
or imaged and stored rather than held in a “locked filing storage
vault” somewhere. And, businesses or professional’s are being hacked all
the time, often with no information about the theft of sensitive data
for months or more. Same thing with Government files
In my work experience I have had to provide fingerprints several times
(you know, for Security and Background Check) and so those are are on
file with both State Police and the FBI. If you have been in the
military, your fingerprints are also on file, more recently also your
DNA. Photo recognition is widely in use….don’t beleive that, don’t have
to look crime drama shows, just use Facebook or a program like i-Photo.
What happens when people put their photos in the Cloud?
Is it possible that Law Enforcement could make a mistake and arrest the
wrong person and ruin their life even if they are quickly released?
Happens all the time. And the comment about the Media and chewing a
person’s life to bits just for becoming known as a suspect in an
investigation….again, happens all the time for the profit and
circulation boost of the various media outlets.
Government and other entities misuse information all the time. So all
this hand wringing and moaning about sensitive data does’t do a lot as
the ability to get at most of you personal data is almost the most
trivial of the problems you face. It’s what they do with it that is the
problem.
This horse left the barn years ago. Now it’s just the ranting and
raving, particularly by politicians who want to “do something” about it
for their own benefit, not for any actual protection of individuals.
That article just about sums up all the problems and
opportunities for both the potential advantages of DNA testing and abuse
of information and power in all of this. Collecting discarded items to
get DNA (and other things) from people. Trying people in the media.
Criminals in public service positions. Politicians making statements
about protecting the public…and not (apparently) actualy doing anything
substantive but get their name and high sounding words in the media
(remember…”do it for the children”) and police not having the right
suspect. And for those who would prefer not to acknowledge it, there are
plenty of Judges who make some decisions based on political or
ideological reasons for which there is little recourse or accountability
under the Judicial System.
From an article by Micheál Ó Maoileoin in the Galway Daily:
“How was Ireland depicted in illustrations
produced by travellers from 1680 to 1860? A new database of images
drawn from travel accounts answers this question.
“Based on years of research by a group of
investigators at NUI Galway led by Professor Jane Conroy, Ireland
Illustrated is now available to view online.”
“Ireland Illustrated, 1680-1860, is a
database of over 500 images of Ireland – woodcuts, water colours,
engravings and other illustrations – with related text, drawn from more
than 50 manuscript and printed works, and highlighting several neglected
or rarely accessible sources.
“Many of the pictures in the database,
woodcuts, water colours, engravings and other illustrations, have
rarely, if ever, been seen by the public.”
I have to believe this could become a huge resource for genealogists. According to an announcement in the Archive.org Blog:
“With generous support from the Institute
of Museum and Library Services, as well as the Kahle/Austin Foundation
and the Archive-It service, the Internet Archive and 27 public library
partners representing 17 different states have launched a new program: Community Webs: Empowering Public Libraries to Create Community History Web Archives.
The program will provide education, applied training, cohort network
development, and web archiving services for a group of public librarians
to develop expertise in web archiving for the purpose of local memory
collecting. Additional partners in the program include OCLC’s
WebJunction training and education service and the public libraries of
Queens, Cleveland and San Francisco will serve as “lead libraries” in
the cohort. The program will result in dozens of terabytes of public
library administered local history web archives, a range of open
educational resources in the form of online courses, videos, and guides,
and a nationwide network of public librarians with expertise in local
history web archiving and the advocacy tools to build and expand the
network. A full listing of the participating public libraries is below
and on the program website.”
This could result in huge online collections local history and
information created by libraries nationwide. The list of participating
libraries is impressive, ranging from big city libraries to one small
town library near me. You can learn more at: http://bit.ly/2IqBJi1.
The following announcement was written by Nashi Predky, the family history group of the Ukrainian History and Education Center:
The
Ukrainian History and Education Center (UHEC) is proud to announce the
first-ever virtual event for Ukrainian genealogy. Nashi Predky (Our
Ancestors), the family history group of the UHEC, will be hosting their
2018 Spring Workshop virtually on Saturday, March 17th .
Since the group’s formation in 2013, all
of the workshops and annual conferences have been held at the Ukrainian
Cultural Center in Somerset, New Jersey. This year, the committee is
excited to offer this event to fellow researchers who may not be able to
travel for an in-person event.
The one-day event will begin at 9 a.m.
with welcoming remarks from the event Chairperson Justin Houser, and the
UHEC Archivist Michael Andrec. The workshop agenda includes four
presentations with Question & Answer periods as well as breaks
between sessions.
Attendees will watch presenters from around United States and Poland speak on the following topics:
Greek Catholics in Poland and Family //Research/ by Tadeusz Piłat (Poland)
Introduction to Ukrainian Genealogy/ by Justin Houser (Pennsylvania)
Introduction to DNA and Genetic Genealogy/ by Paul Woodbury (Utah)
A Historical Overview of Ukraine/ by Michael Andrec (New Jersey)
Using the GoToWebinar
online conferencing platform, attendees can view the presentations from
anywhere in the world on their own computer or mobile device with an
Internet connection. Those attending the live sessions can also actively
participate in the talks and ask questions through a special chat
feature. Presentations will be archived for a 72-hour period after the
event ends.
I believe virtual conferences are the wave of
the future. I just returned from a 4-day genealogy conference in Salt
Lake City. With the air travel, hotel expenses, restaurant meals, and
conference admission, I spent more than $1,500 US. I also spent six days
away from home: one day traveling to the event (in the cheapest airline
coach seats I could find), four days at the conference, and one more
day returning home. I am sure that attendees from overseas spent much
more than I did.
Obviously, many people are not able to pay that much
money or to take that many days out of their lives to attend such an
event, regardless of their interest level. Luckily, technology can
provide an alternative.
Holding
events online is called a “virtual conference.” The presenters usually
remain in their homes, using their own computers and video cameras to
deliver their talks, videos, and slide shows. Attendees also typically
remain in their homes or go to a nearby library or office and watch the
conference events live on computers. Travel expenses and meals are close
to zero. Even a conference syllabus is usually available online as a
free electronic download, much cheaper than the $25 to $50 required to
print each syllabus on paper.
In addition, the virtual conference organizers do not
need to spend thousands of dollars for renting a modern conference
center. The end result is lower costs all around. The attendees benefit
again because admittance to virtual conferences is usually much, much
cheaper than attending a conference in person.
Is an online virtual conference just as effective as
attending a conference in person? I will suggest it is not. There are
several elements missing in a virtual conference. I know I certainly
miss the camaraderie of talking with other attendees in the hallways or
in social situations before and after the daily conference events.
Nonetheless, I will suggest that the virtual conferences do provide MOST of the benefits of an in-person conference and do so at a fraction of the price of traditional events.
Their are two financial considerations:
The ever-increasing expenses of travel, hotels, and restaurant meals
The ever-decreasing expenses of producing live virtual conferences
Here is a suggestion to future conference organizers: you might want to hold your next event in the online world.
One of the more useful tools for genealogists is the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries
created by the Newberry Library in Chicago. When I first started in
genealogy, one of my biggest frustrations was trying to find records of
ancestors in the county where they lived. Many genealogical records are
created by counties. In many cases, I knew the town where they lived and
I also knew what county the town was in. Yet I couldn’t find the
records that normally are kept in county courthouses, such as probate
records or the deeds of land transfers.
As I gained more experience, I soon learned that the problem was
mine. I had looked in the country records for the county lines of today.
In many cases, the county lines had moved over the years, even though
my ancestors had not moved an inch. Once recorded at the county
courthouse, records normally remain at that courthouse forever, even if
the county lines are redrawn later and the property or the town in
question is then “moved” to a different county.
For instance, if your ancestor lived in the town of Smallville in
Washington County when the information was recorded at the courthouse
and later the county lines were redrawn so that town of Smallville and
your ancestor’s location were later in Lincoln County, you still need to
look for older records in the Washington County courthouse. Existing
courthouse records usually are not moved to a new courthouse when county
lines are redrawn.
Experienced genealogists all know that you need to look in the county
courthouse for the correct county as of the date the records were
filed. But how do you find the the correct county lines as of the
date(s) your ancestors lived there and left records? You can find
several books at well-equipped libraries that will provide that
information. However, the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries
will provide the information as well without requiring the time and
travel expenses of visiting a well-equipped library. Yes, you can find
the information without leaving home. The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries web site is available FREE
of charge. You can even download the files to your own computer and
save them or use them as you please. The online atlas has been available
for years but I find that many genealogists are unaware of its
existence and do not know how useful it can be.
With the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, you can view
records on a per state basis, an interactive map, or choose the time
slots that best meet your requirements. You can search by location or by
time or by both. To use the web site for the first time, select a state
from the map on the site’s home page to view all of the Atlas’ content
related to that state, including shapefiles, chronologies, and metadata.
If you cannot quickly find the information you seek, narrow the search
by choosing from the available list of options. Probably the most useful
option for genealogists is to display maps by dates.
A lot of helpful information about the site can be found on the “Using the Atlas” page at: http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/usingatlas.html.
This is a web site worth bookmarking. You probably won’t need to use
it often but, if you do ever have a need, it can supply the information
you seek quickly.
The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries is available at the Newberry Library’s web site at: http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp.
I suspect this is going to be a major tool for all
genealogists. The following announcement describes the latest project by
several people, including Dallan Quass, a well-known software developer
who has produced several excellent genealogy products in the past. He
was the Chief Technology Officer of FamilySearch from 2002-2004 and the
creator of WeRelate.org and GenGophers.com, two of FamilyTree Magazine’s
top 101 genealogy websites. RootsFinder tries to be a great tree for supporting
genealogy researchers at all levels, but especially new genealogy
researchers. It also focuses heavily on pictures, stories, and videos to
make things more interesting for a younger audience.
Here is the announcement:
RootsFinder.com
is a free, online family tree that makes researching family history
much easier. Unlike other online trees, which only provide hints to
their own content, RootsFinder provides hints and search suggestions to
websites such as:
FamilySearch
FindMyPast
AmericanAncestors
BillionGraves
FindAGrave
Ancestry
MyHeritage
and more
In addition, seamless sync with
FamilySearch, integration with GenSmarts, evidence analysis, embedded
research logs, and DNA tools (coming soon) add to RootsFinder’s powerful
offering.
Along with these valuable tools,
RootsFinder has also developed two Chrome Browser Extensions. The
extensions make research and recording information faster and more
accurate.
WebClipper – Copy records and source
citations quickly and automatically into your family tree from major
genealogy websites such as Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and more.
It adds records to entire families at once.
ToDo Creator – Save search ideas for
later by attaching action items to specific people in your family tree,
adding them to research logs, and marking them complete when done.
RootsFinder also has tools that make it easy to share your genealogy with your family safely and securely:
Invite others to your tree, but you control who edits
Ancestor reports with stories and pictures can be turned into family history books
Descendancy reports in the register format
Videos & photo mosaics created from your media
Fan charts and wall charts
Pinterest-like media wall for scrolling through photos
Two plans are available: an ad-supported
Free-Forever plan, and a $35/year Pro plan that removes ads and includes
additional storage and advanced features. Everyone gets a 30-day Pro
plan for free.
A small group of dedicated
genealogists and software developers have been working on RootsFinder
for the past three years. Our goal is to provide a free online family
tree that is focused on the needs of the genealogy researcher. We think
we finally have something worth talking about. – Dallan Quass
About RootsFinder
RootsFinder (https://www.rootsfinder.com)
was founded in 2015 by Dallan Quass, CTO of FamilySearch from 2002-2004
and the creator of WeRelate.org and GenGophers.com, two of FamilyTree
Magazine’s top 101 genealogy websites. Dallan is joined at RootsFinder
by Heather Henderson, Erin Harris, and other experienced genealogists
who share his love of family history.
HOW MANY OF YOU FAMILY HISTORIANS TAKE YOUR INTERNET ACCESS for Granted?
Those of you who live in the city or town take for granted your highspeed or broadband download and upload and so Family History Research is a given, but what about Rural areas?
Do all of you have the same options of 50 mbs DL (Download) and 12 mbs UL (Upload)?
If not why not?
Are you the typical baby boomer who doesn't have a lot of time left to do your research, share it with others and preserve it for future generations?
If you live in South Dakota, please support our blog to draw attention to the problems with certain providers that charge a LOT for a LITTLE, with Caps on usage. Without the great upload speeds, how do you preserve your photos, documents in the cloud?
Can you get somebody to listen to you?
Please visit this blog and post comments to any of the articles! If you aren't in South Dakota but in RURAL ANYWHERE, please support us--let us know how you get broadband, high speeds, with no caps, at a reasonable price.
Genealogy information can be found in many places. Most
genealogists know about and use the various online sites that have
census records, vital records, pension application files, and
user-contributed family trees online. These are great resources but they
are not the only ones available to us. For instance, have you used
JSTOR? JSTOR
is an online library of hundreds of years of academic research and
presently contains more than 1,900 journal titles in more than 50
disciplines. The web site started in 1995 as a site containing back
issues of academic journals. Since then, JSTOR has grown to include
books and primary sources, and current issues of journals.
A quick search for “genealogy” on the JSTOR web site produced 105,889 “hits” to that word.
As always, I searched for some of the surnames in my own family tree.
Here is one that I found that can serve as a typical example of the
information found on JSTOR:
JOURNAL ARTICLE Eastman’s Maternal Ancestry: Letter from Charles Alexander Eastman to H. M. Hitchcock, September 8, 1927
A. LAVONNE BROWN RUOFF
Studies in American Indian Literatures
Series 2, Vol. 17, No. 2, Honoring A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff (SUMMER 2005), pp. 10-17
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20737262
Page Count: 8
JSTOR provides full-text searches of more than 1,900 journals and
more than a few of those are journals published by some of the most
respected historical societies of our time. Most of the journals are
published online on JSTOR about 3 to 5 years after publication in print.
However, if a journal’s publishers agree, journals may be published
even earlier.
Journals available in JSTOR typically do not contain lists of
individual residents of an area. However, they are very useful for:
Researching historical figures, places, and events
Finding state- and region-specific information and history
Learning about immigration patterns, political movements, and social issues of the day
Some of the available online journals include:
The Arkansas Historical Quarterly published by the Arkansas Historical Association
Massachusetts Historical Review
Michigan Historical Review
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
Wisconsin Magazine of History
Tennessee Historical Quarterly
The above is an abbreviated list; there are many more.
JSTOR is a subscription web site although it is possible to read up
to three articles at no charge. Plans start at $9.99 per month or $99
per year if paid one year in advance. However, many libraries have
subscriptions to JSTOR so it is possible to gain free access by visiting
a local library in person or, in some cases, accessing JSTOR remotely
by first logging onto your library’s web site and using its “gateway” to
JSTOR. More than 7,000 academic institutions, public libraries,
research institutions, museums, and schools in more than 150 countries
have access.
JSTOR is available at: http://www.jstor.org.
"My
grandfather was caramel-skinned with black eyes and thick, dark hair,
and until he discovered that he was adopted, he had no reason to suspect
that he was not the son of two poor Mexicans as he’d always been told.
When he found his adoption papers, according to family lore, he pestered
the nuns at the Dallas orphanage where he had lived as an infant for
the name of his birth mother. Name in hand, at 10 years old, he hopped a
bus to Pennsylvania, met his birth mother, and found out that he was
actually Syrian.
At least that’s what we thought until my Aunt Cat mailed a tube of her spit in to AncestryDNA.
Genetic
testing suggested that my aunt’s genetic makeup was only a tiny bit
Middle Eastern—16 percent, not the 50 percent you might expect if your
father was a full-blooded Syrian, as my grandfather believed himself to
be. The rest of her Ancestry breakdown provided some explanation, but
mostly more confusion. While we typically think of the Caucasus as
countries on the Black and Caspian seas like Turkey and Armenia,
Ancestry’s test also said it includes Syria. According to Ancestry, the
Caucasus accounted for another 15 percent of my Aunt Cat’s DNA. What
about the other 20 percent? One line-item stood out as something my aunt
hadn’t expected, based on what she knew about either of her parents:
She was 30 percent Italian-Greek. My mother’s test revealed similar
results.
This caused a minor family scandal.My
grandfather’s mother was born in Pennsylvania, but she had lived in an
insular Syrian community that never really assimilated. She became
pregnant as a teen by her father’s best friend. The assumption had
always been that he was Syrian, too. If we weren’t who we thought we
were, well, then, who were we?
“I guess we never knew the name
of Dad’s father,” my aunt told me, bemused. Suddenly it seemed as
though all along we had been missing a gigantic puzzle piece of
information about our family tree. At least, my aunt quipped, this was a
solid explanation for why she loved pasta.
It’s right there in the fine print of any consumer DNA test, if you bother to read it: DNA testing can come with identity-disrupting surprises,
be it an unexpected relative, genetic condition, or, in our case,
heritage. But something about this particular surprise didn’t feel quite
right."
My Aunt Catis
our family’s amateur genealogist, and she has logged hundreds of hours
both on Ancestry.com and in my grandmother’s attic, piecing together the
story of our family tree. She’s found countless third, fourth, and
fifth cousins with ties to Syria, but no one from either Italy or
Greece. In her twenties, she even visited my grandfather’s biological
mother and aunt. She recalled them passing around a hookah, yelling in
Arabic, and expressing repulsion at the American-style cold cut platter
served at a community function. Given how segregated the family was, it
seemed like a stretch, she told me, to imagine that anyone had ever had
so much as a friendly conversation with an Italian. I suspected
the error might lay not in my family narrative, but in the DNA test
itself. So I decided to conduct an experiment. I mailed my own spit
samples to AncestryDNA, as well as to 23andMe and National Geographic.
For each test I got back, the story of my genetic heritage was
different—in some cases, wildly so.
My
AncestryDNA test revealed that I, too, had geographic roots in the
Middle East, the Caucasus, and Southern Europe, along with the expected
big dose of Scandinavian from my very Norwegian father. Weirdly, though,
my percentages of Middle Eastern and Caucasus were almost as high as my
mom and aunt’s, though you would expect them to be closer to half.
It
got more confusing from there. My test through National Geographic
(which partners with the DNA sequencing company Helix for its test) gave
me even more links to the Middle East, with 16 percent of my DNA from
Asia Minor, 6 percent from the Persian Gulf and 9 percent something
called “Jewish Diaspora.” Unlike AncestryDNA, National Geographic’s test
assigns your heritage to broad regions instead of modern nation-states.
But I could infer that, according to National Geographic, I was less
Scandinavian based on my percentage of Northwestern European. I was also
more Southern European and, for fun, now had a good chunk of Eastern
European thrown in there, too.
23andMe’s
ancestry results were the most confounding of all. It found that I was
only 3 percent Scandanavian, a number that, based on my recent family
history, I know is flatly wrong. It also found I was only 5.5 percent
Middle Eastern and a whopping 62.6 percent Northwestern European. And no
Eastern European at all.
I also uploaded my 23andMe data to GenCove,
a small ancestry-test startup founded by scientists. Based on the exact
same data that 23andMe had crunched, GenCove reported that 8 percent of
my DNA was from the Indian subcontinent. 23andMe had found I had no
South Asian DNA at all.
Fourtests,
four very different answers about where my DNA comes from—including
some results that contradicted family history I felt confident was fact.
What gives?
There are a few different factors at play here.
Genetics
is inherently a comparative science: Data about your genes is
determined by comparing them to the genes of other people.
As
Adam Rutherford, a British geneticist and author of the excellent book
“A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived,” explained to me, we’ve got
a fundamental misunderstanding of what an ancestry DNA test even does.
“They’re
not telling you where your DNA comes from in the past,” he told me,
“They’re telling you where on Earth your DNA is from today.” Ancestry,
for example, had determined that my Aunt Cat was 30 percent Italian by
comparing her genes to other people in its database of more than six million people, and finding presumably that her genes had a lot of things in common with the present-day people of Italy. Heritage
DNA tests are more accurate for some groups of people than others,
depending how many people with similar DNA to yours have already taken
their test. Ancestry and 23andMe have actually bothpublished papers about how their statistical modeling works.
As
Ancestry puts it: “When considering AncestryDNA estimates of genetic
ethnicity it is important to remember that our estimates are, in fact,
estimates. The estimates are variable and depend on the method applied,
the reference panel used, and the other customer samples included during
estimation.”
That the data sets are primarily made up of
paying customers also skews demographics. If there’s only a small number
of Middle Eastern DNA samples that your DNA has been matched against,
it’s less likely you’ll get a strong Middle Eastern match. “Different
companies have different reference data sets and different algorithms,
hence the variance in results,” a spokesman from 23andMe told me.
“Middle Eastern reference populations are not as well represented as
European, an industry-wide challenge.”
As
a person of Syrian descent, the British genealogist Debbie Kennett told
me, my test was simply not going to be as accurate as fellow Americans
whose relatives skew more European. “The tests are mainly geared for an
American audience, and they tend to not have a lot of Middle Eastern
ancestry,” she said.
Likewise, Kennett said, because
relatively few English people have taken tests from American companies
like Ancestry or 23andMe, residents of the U.K. are likely to find less
useful results.
“A lot of
English people come up with a low percentage of British. My dad was only
8 percent British and most of his ancestors as far back as I can trace
came back from Great Britain,” she told me. “People in America come up
with much higher percentage of British, often.”
Another
anecdote that stuck with me came from my friend Alexis Madrigal.
Initially, he said, his Mexican family came up as Arab North African,
which was surprising. As 23andMe refined its test and its data set grew,
it also refined the results: Now, he was descended from Jewish people
from Southern Europe. The number of Madrigals in central Spain had long
led the family to suspect that their migratory path to Mexico had at
some point passed through this region. As more people took the test, the
picture of where his family was “from” changed. The Canadian
bioethicist Timothy Caulfield shared a similar story. At first a DNA
test revealed he was entirely Irish, but as the data set changed, he
gradually became less Irish.
When we talk about “ancestry,” we
also don’t always mean the same thing. Ancestry just implies people
you’re descended from. But when? In America, we often mean whenever our
relatives came to the U.S. On my dad’s side, I expected to see a lot of
Scandinavian, because just a few generations ago my great grandparents
came from Norway to North Dakota. On my mom’s side, my grandmother has a
relative that came to America on the Mayflower. Both are what come to
mind when I think of my “ancestors,” but they are separated by several
generations and hundreds of years in time. Rutherford pointed out that
if we went 5oo years back, my ancestors were probably from all over
Europe.
“You and I are probably fifth cousins,” he said. Where
your ancestors are from depends on what period in time you’re talking
about. Why don’t I instead say I’m 50 percent North Dakotan and 50
percent Texan?
Tests
also differ from one another because they’re simply looking at
different things. The results of ancestry tests aren’t based on a
reading of your whole genome. The vast majority of every human’s DNA is
identical to any other human’s. Ancestry tests look at SNPs, the places
on your genome where an individual letter tends to differ between
people and give us insight into characteristics like disease, ancestry,
and physical appearance. When an SNP occurs within a gene, then, in
science-speak, that gene has more than one allele, or alternate forms of
a gene that exist in the exact same place on a chromosome. To make
matters more confusing, some tests look at mitochondrial and Y
chromosome DNA, while others don’t.
The CEO of GenCove, the
company where I had uploaded my 23andMe data to get drastically
different results, told me that even though he expects a fair amount of
variability between algorithms, even he was surprised at how differently
his company and 23andMe had interpreted my DNA data. He asked me to
also upload my Ancestry data, and ran both data sets again after
GenCove’s algorithm had been updated. The results were all over the map.
“To be honest I’m a little confused about what’s going on,” CEO Joseph Pickrell told me. Each
testing company is looking at different alleles from different parts of
the genome, and using different algorithms to crunch that data. (You
can see a list of how company tests differ here.) It’s worth mentioning that genetics is also probabilistic: just because you have the gene, doesn’t mean you have the trait.
“One
British company identified an allele in me that gave me ginger hair,
and 23andMe didn’t,” said Rutherford. “That’s a simple case where they
just used different alleles. That’s relatively simple to explain.”
And
sometimes, the algorithms might just get it wrong. Rutherford told me
his 23andMe test came back with a tiny amount of Native American DNA.
The finding actually linked up with one anecdote from his family lore,
about a relative of his father’s that was a Native American tribesman
and horse jumper in a British traveling circus.
“As
a geneticist, I am absolutely convinced that they’re not related,” he
told me. “It’s just statistical noise that happens to coincide with this
cool story.” Statistically, it’s unlikely that such tiny amount of
Native American DNA would have been enough to show up on Rutherford’s
test. A
big problem is that many of us have a basic misunderstanding of what
exactly we’re reading when Ancestry or 23andMe or National Geographic
sends us colorful infographics about how British or Irish or
Scandinavian we are. It’s not that the science is bad. It’s that it’s
inherently imperfect, an estimation based on how much our DNA matches up
with people in other places around the world, in a world where people
have been mixing and matching and getting it on since the beginning of
human history.
“You’re
creating different algorithms and you’re using different data sets as
your reference points, so it makes sense that you’re going to get some
different responses,” the Harvard geneticist Robert Green explained to
me, as I tried to make sense of my own DNA data. “It’s not that one’s
wrong and one’s right. It’s that there isn’t an agreed-upon approach to
pick the right number of markers and combine them mathematically.
Everyone is sort of just making it up as they go along.”
At
the continental level, said Kennett, ancestry testing is useful. It can
tell you pretty reliably whether you are African or Asian or European.
It can also reliably identify close familial relatives, as distant as
third or fourth cousins. Otherwise, Kennett said, “take it with a large
pinch of salt.”
Nearly everyone I interviewed for this story said
that, taken with the right mindset, ancestry DNA testing can be fun. As
more people take DNA tests and company data sets grow, the results from
those tests will also become more detailed and accurate. Anecdotally, I
saw this in my own results. Ancestry has the biggest DNA database, and
its interpretation of my DNA was also most in-line with what I expected.
“The
more people that take tests, the better the experience for all of us,”
an Ancestry spokesman told me. “Your DNA does not change, our science
does.” But consumer genetic testing companies have also fueled the
misunderstanding of their products, suggesting that those colorful
results reveal something profound about what makes you, you.
Take
this AncestryDNA ad about Kyle Merker, who, the ads explains, grew up
German, wearing a lederhosen and performing traditional German dances.
Then an AncestryDNA test revealed he was actually Scottish and Irish. He
bought a kilt.
Ancestry.com
is suggesting—quite heavy-handedly—that your DNA can define your
identity. A few changes to those As, Gs, Ts, and Cs, and all of the
sudden you’re river dancing. “Your
culture is not your genes,” said Caulfield. “But the message these
companies send is somehow where your genes are from matters. That’s not
necessarily constructive. The role of genes in who we are is very
complex. If anything, as genetic research moves forward we’re learning
that it’s even more complex than we thought.”
In truth, your
specific ancestors actually have relatively little impact on your DNA.
Some 99.99 percent of your DNA is identical to every other human’s.
We’re mostly just all the same. But instead of embracing our genetic
similarities, we cling to those differences as symbols of what makes us
unique. Consumer DNA testing tends to reinforce that—even though the
difference that one test reveals might not even exist in another.
“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.” Your
DNA is only part of what determines who you are, even if the analysis
of it is correct. Plenty of people love pasta, with or without Italian
DNA.
If the messaging of consumer DNA companies more
accurately reflected the science, though, it might be a lot less
compelling: Spit in a tube and find out where on the planet it’s
statistically probable that you share ancestry with today.
Learning
he was Syrian did not seem to impact my grandfather’s identity as a
Mexican man. And how could it? His life story was the story of so many
children of immigrants. His father, Manuel, had swum the Rio Grande from
Mexico to America in hopes of a better future. He worked as a waiter,
and my great-grandmother as a seamstress. At age 10, my grandfather was
sent to work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant to help the family make ends
meet. He lost a finger. Eventually, he met my blonde-haired, blue-eyed
grandmother and moved to California, hoping to raise their children
somewhere it would matter less that one of their parents spoke Spanish
as a first language.
But
me, I don’t even look the part. I’m fair with blue eyes. As a kid, I
remember wincing when my friend’s mom made xenophobic comments directed
at Mexicans, never suspecting her daughter’s fair friend had some
Mexican ties, even if they were not by blood but by heart. As an adult, I
learned Arabic and perfected my tamale-making, all in search of some
sort of an identity fit. When my grandfather was dying, I struggled with
the relationship between DNA and cultural identity. I wondered what
would become of my Mexican heritage, once my last living link to it was
gone.
In the end, I finally found the same wisdom my
grandfather never seemed to question. Sometimes your heritage doesn’t
have anything at all to do with your genetics—and I didn’t even have to
spit in a test tube to figure it out."
Privacy
advocates and many others have since questioned the legality of using
the information for law enforcement purposes. Admittedly, the
information is publicly available for all to see. The genealogists who
contributed the information did so willingly and presumably gave
permission for the family DNA to be available to all. However, the
relatives of the uploading genealogists may or may not have given
permission for THEIR personal DNA information to be
made available to the public. After all, it isn’t the DNA of any one
individual; it is indeed the family’s DNA information. Not all family
members have agreed to having that information made available to
genealogists, law enforcement personnel, insurance companies, and
worldwide hackers alike.
Ok help me here. How could this be done? Even theoretically?