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Ancestry.com To Add DNA Test Results
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jun 19, 2007 06:58 AM
from the who's-yer-daddy dept.
from the who's-yer-daddy dept.
Spamicles writes "For less than $200 and a cheek-swiped cotton swab, you will soon be able to add DNA results to family tree Web sites. Ancestry.com plans to launch the DNA testing product by the end of summer, offering customers the possibility of finding DNA matches in the site's 24,000 genealogical databases. By taking a simple cheek-swab test and comparing results against DNA profiles in a test-results database, virtually anyone can uncover genealogical associations unimaginable just a few years ago. Users can easily connect with and discover lost or unknown relatives within a few generations, as well as gain insight into where their families originated thousands of years ago."
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This has been available for a while (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:4, Insightful)
If it would help make the streets safer for our children, why would anyone have a problem with that?
Sorry, full of the snark this morning.
Parent
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:4, Insightful)
If the bum were to leave their DNA at a scene, you can clear your own name by giving a blood sample and just claiming that ancestory.com screwed up the samples.
Parent
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:4, Informative)
OTOH, as long as a doctor is the one obtaining the DNA, there is a degree of doctor/patient confidentiality. On the gripping hand, the courts generally will still issue a subpoena to get DNA from medical records (again, with reasonable cause), and I suppose it's no different in this case.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or they could just ask RIAA to borrow their pretexting experts.
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:5, Informative)
Now... if you have no alibi for the time they're placing the crime at, and no good explanation whatsoever of why your DNA would be there... yes, the police may investigate you a little closer. Still doesn't mean they'll just skip the whole investigation and trial thing and just lock you up 'because the DNA said he did it'. If they tried, then lawyers these days are quite savvy enough to come up with some reasonable explanation of why your DNA might be there (even if you can't), and the cops, too, know they'll need a little more than that to convince a judge/jury.
I find automated bits and pieces just as scary as the next guy (probably a bit scarier because I've been detained at 3 separate events for carrying a camera with a suspicious looking lens (it's a fisheye) - one of which was a bomb scare - so yeah, I know how it feels to automatically be 'suspect'), but let's not blow things way out of proportion.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There was this problem of the lab using incorrect techniques and even worse apparently just saying the DNA evidence matched if the prosecution really wanted it too.
DNA evidence can be manipulated fairly easily apparently. It took close to a decade before they got caught.
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This has been available for a while (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but if you get someone with enough similarities to suggest a familial connection, you can go interview them about their family.
"Mrs. Scharffenberger, do you have any close relatives who live in the Mendocino area? Do you know where they were Saturday night?"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that to say you've never lied, even a little bit? You've never once said a not so nice thing to someone? And that said, all bad people have never done a good thing? They never once held a door open for someone? They hold no compassion for anyone or anything?
Then you have completely missed my point. There is a huge difference between what you say above, and things like rape, murder, arson, etc. Those who commit the latter are the bad people. Those who do the former are merely imperfect and human.
Sorry, but there is no black and white, good and evil. Only shades of grey. A criminal that steals may have been left with two choices: starve or steal. Lose their home or steal. most "bad" people are the product of their environment, they weren't born that way, just as the "good" people were.
And now you're insulting all of those who live in the same circumstances who do not choose to become criminals.
It's a matter of circumstance, and while I consider myself a relatively good person, I take offense to the line of thinking that someone who commits a crime is simply a "bad person".
Likewise, you pretending there isn't an ethical decision made to victimize others, that it's just circumstances, is offensive.
It's a way of thinking that I'm sure makes your life easier, being able to split the world into two camps. But that's just not reality.
It absolutely is. C
It would likely be useless. (Score:3, Interesting)
The most extreme test available (67 Y-c
I hate the relatives I have (Score:5, Funny)
Privacy? (Score:5, Informative)
God only knows how something like ancestry.com manages to keep afloat with all the privacy concerns.
P.S. I would try to put my database back up and require registration for searching, but there is no way for me to validate any registration (to avoid identity theives), so the point is probably moot.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it's an onerous task to do all that research. Security through obscurity and pain-in-the-assity actually works most of the time in the real world. It's when it becomes EASY to find that information that the amount of identity theft becomes a problem worth spending a ton of resources to defeat.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. However, the banks, etc., don't really care what answer you use for mother's maiden name; give them anything you want which you will remember if needed. This applies to any of these test questions; the answer need not have anything to do with reality.
Re:Privacy? (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked at a data archive under the Department of Justice and the FBI in the late 90s/early 00s, and they were just making a switch to dowloads from distributing CDs full of data for the cost of the CD plus shipping. You see, the data was supposed to be a matter of public record. But if they wanted a copy, once upon a time it meant many, many days with a mimeograph. Or a punchcard machine. Or waiting for (and paying for) a CD to arrive in the mail. (All of these changes over the course of 20 years, after many decades of needing to visit!)
People finally had the bandwith to download. The biggest issue people at the archive struggled with? If it's too easy to use, any schmuck who wants to can get a copy. In the past you had to go to great, or at least greater, lengths to get the information. There was more resistance than you can imagine to making the website user friendly as opposed to intentional obfuscation(!) simply because "a matter of public record" has a very, very different meaning now than it did twenty years ago.
If the FBI wants your mother's maiden name (or diary) and have filled out all the appropriate paperwork, they can find out whether they have to go to the local archive (or your bedroom) or not. But if Joe Schmoe wants your mother's maiden name (or your diary), there's a difference between him making a special trip to an archive (or visiting your bedroom) and him typing your name into Google.
Which is not to say I don't think that "matter of public record" information shouldn't be on the internet. It should be. Information wants to be free and all that... but lots of very stupid people are going to suffer because they didn't realize that their blog wasn't private, and lots and lots of smart people are going to suffer because some credit companies only allow people to use things that are a matter of public record as passwords. It's going to take a while for people-- and especially for institutions-- to get used to the idea that public has a whole new meaning; that accessible is the new last word in privacy.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Beyond that it is mostly public records.
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)
The saddest is what you ran into. If I remember what she told me correctly, it's either legally required, or just good form, to only publish those who are deceased or records older than 80 years. I'm probably off on that number though. Why I consider it sad is that I wouldn't know cousin Vinnie. He (the mythical Vinnie) could be a blood relation from a fork of our tree in 1500 Europe.
She wants, or needs, to show real documentation of the person and how they relate. She considers the accuracy of her work very important. Just because she finds (buys, borrows, whatever) someone else's tree doesn't mean that any of the information in it is accurate. Say our trees did cross. How is she to know without all the supporting documentation that the details are correct. Maybe that birth of Isaac on December 4 of 1606 was really April 12th of 1606. If she follows your tree without verification, she'll be following incorrect data to dead ends.
I do like the idea of being able to find real-world relations. For my family, we're friendly enough so I don't suspect there would be problems. I know some families aren't quite so nice. Just because cousin Vinnie is a billionaire, every distant cousin would be bugging him for some of his cash.
I'll probably be putting myself into the system. I'm curious to see who's out there. Maybe I have a distant cousin who's also a reader here, and we have a lot in common.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I mean, they're family so you had to pull it down, but still.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is going to be interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Can you provide a link to the study, I have often seen this quote, but never found a reliable source which shows the result of the study.
Parent
Non-paternity rate: reference (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200707/paternity [theatlantic.com]
From the article:
"When geneticists do large-scale studies of populations, they sometimes can't help but learn about the paternity of the research subjects. They rarely publish their findings, but the numbers are common knowledge within the genetics community. In graduate school, genetics students typically are taught that 5 to 15 percent of the men on birth certificates are not the biological fathers of their children. In other words, as many as one of every seven men who proudly carry their newborn children out of a hospital could be a cuckold."
"Non-paternity rates appear to be substantially lower in some populations. The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, which is based in Salt Lake City, now has a genetic and genealogical database covering almost 100,000 volunteers, with an overrepresentation of people interested in genealogy. The non-paternity rate for a representative sample of its father-son pairs is less than 2 percent. But other reputed non-paternity rates are higher than the canonical numbers. One unpublished study of blood groups in a town in southeastern England indicated that 30 percent of the town's husbands could not have been the biological fathers of their children."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
That reminds me of a joke I read some moons ago (Score:5, Funny)
they were willing to try it out. They were both very much in favor of it. The doctor set the pain transfer to 10% for starters, explaining that even 10% was probably more pain than the father had ever experienced before.
But as the labor progressed, the husband felt fine and asked the doctor to go ahead and bump it up a notch. The doctor then adjusted the machine to 20% pain transfer. The husband was still feeling fine. The doctor checked
the husband's blood pressure and was amazed at how well he was doing. At this point they decided to try for 50%. The husband continued to feel quite well. Since the pain transfer was obviously helping out the wife considerably, the husband encouraged the doctor to transfer ALL the pain to him. The wife deliverer a healthy baby with virtually no pain. She and her husband were ecstatic.
When they got home, the mailman was dead on the porch.
Parent
You insensitive clod... (Score:3, Funny)
Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Then... there's the privacy aspect. But just because I didn't do anything, yet, doesn't mean....
It'll be interesting to see.
hah.. (Score:2)
OMG..GATTICA..BIG BROTHER, ALIENS UP MY REAR END.. HARP.. CHENEYBUSHFIELDRICE..MOON LANDING..
etc.. you get the idea..
personally though, I would be interested in the results they can display on the web based no that.
Powered by the NSA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Insurance company - "We've found that your family has a higher risk of kidney disease. In the interest of sharing the risk we won't offer insurance for dialysis or kidney transplant".
I just hope they make the effort to educate people about the pro's and con's of making your dna public.
Worst idea ever (Score:4, Interesting)
Excellent, now the last thing left is for someone to invent a practical cloning machine.
For less than $200 of course.
Anyone got a bittorent to Pamela Anderson's DNA?
Re: (Score:2)
Here's most of it (you can select other chromosomes for downloading through that interface):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview/seq_reg.cgi?ta xid=9606&chr=1&from=1&to=247249719 [nih.gov]
The rest is just a matter of a few million mutations scattered throughout the genome. Oh, and the bits of the genome that are proving to be very difficult to sequence.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview/seq_reg.cgi?ta [nih.gov] xid=9606&chr=1&from=1&to=247249719
The rest is just a matter of a few million mutations scattered throughout the genome. Oh, and the bits of the genome that are proving to be very difficult to sequence.
That's like painting a DELL white and calling it "Macintosh". No candy for you.
Genetic traits over DNA (Score:4, Interesting)
For example part of my family is Swiss, about six generations back. Part of my wife's family is also Swiss, about four generations back. Her family happens to be from the part of Switzerland that has a wierd abnormality in a small percentage of their population. Sometimes their adult teeth don't develop. Because of this trait and research my wife was able to trace her family to an exact village.
Oh, and no ones privacy was ever in danger.
DNA on the other hand is still latereal in time and not verticle. Unless you want to test a corpse you can't go back many generations. A good tool to see what uncle Joe REALLY did on those "sales" trips in Vegas, but not much good as a family history research tool.
But what if your DNA doesn't match? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, there are many cases of people not being told that they were adopted and a web site like this is not the ideal way to discover this. You really need an organization that has some form of immediate support for people who receive unexpected surprises.
If I had the spare cash... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bradshaw Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
This is a valuable service (yes there are others available) that tests certain parts of the mitachondrial DNA to establish your maternal lineage and tests certain parts of the Y chromosome (I make the assumption that 98% of the readers are male) to establish your paternal lineage.
If you want to educate yourself on one of the benefits, please take a few hours to learn how this technique has provided amazing details of the 165k yr journey of mankind to populate the planet http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey [bradshawfoundation.com]
Altogether now... in three-part harmony... (Score:3, Funny)
"So the years went by and he wished he was dead. He had seventeen girls and still wasn't wed.
When he'd ask his papa, papa would always say, 'No! That girl is your sister but your mama don't know!'
"So he went to his mama and he bowed his head. Told his mama what his papa had said.
His mama said, 'Son, go, man, go! Your papa ain't your papa but your papa don't know!'"
--"Ah Woe, Ah Me," Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane, John Stewart, popularized by the Kingston Trio
"She's the illegitimate daughter, of the illegitimate son, of the illegitimate nephew of Napoleon."
--Ira Gershwin, _Of Thee I Sing+
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Some of mine are pretty sweet, I'd like to give them some DNA if you know what I mean.
Re: (Score:2)
Just because you don't find the service valuable doesn't mean the premise is creepy or silly, and having an organization maintain such a database is a requirement for such a service to function. Besides, may
Re:Why exactly (Score:5, Informative)
And no, that has nothing to do with "put[ting] more names in the Book of Mormon". In fact, while Baptism for the Dead is mentioned in the Bible (1 Corinthians 15:29), it isn't mentioned at all in the Book of Mormon.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Fell out of a tree?
Landed in a volcano in a spaceship that looked like a DC3?
Descendants of the arc?
There are so many stories. Pick one. No, pick two, keep it interesting.