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DNA Tests

Not to mention the possibility of getting cloned without your knowledge...I wear the tinfoil hat to avoid the Satellite probing or alien insertion but just to let them have free access to the jingly bits no way.

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If a person did a serious crime then that person should be caught, whether he is a relative of yours or not. I have a clean record and don't mind my DNA being used to advance science and learn more about my ancestors. The rewards are worth far more than any risks that may or may not be present in what I have discovered about my ancestors. I now have my ancestry traced back to the late 16th Century and find it very interesting. Not only have I learned who my ancestors were, and what sort of conditions they lived in,but also why the left the old country to immigrate to the U.S. It's like a lesson in history.
 
Greg Kulbick said:
Kind of. A researcher compared the cold case DNA from the suspect to the DNA records available on a particular site that compiles uploaded DNA information. They used the suspect's DNA to find a relative, then interviewed the person and started getting info on family, then traced it to the person's uncle or some such thing. He turned out to be the killer.
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That story was on 60 minutes or something not that long ago. I can’t remember the site now but it is a site where a person voluntarily uploads their dna to it. It was not the same site that would be selling these kits, Ancestry.com, 23andme etc.
 
My wife and I did these tests for our anniversary last year. Her results we pretty basic and boring for the most part. Mine were rather enlightening. Here is the short version.

Always thought my mom was Polish due to her last name. So when Poland did not come back very strong on my test it raised my eyebrows. So I matched this other family on ancestry and none of my family knows who they are. We start messaging back and forth and figure all this out. Well after a couple months it turns out that Grandma has a one night stand while married to my mothers Dad. He left when my mom was 3 and we have no contact with him. My grandma passed away years ago but this guy (my grandpa) is still alive. Now the ball is in my mother’s court about how to proceed. I would like to meet them at the very least but my mom is a little hesitant.
 
Wife and I had just recently talked about doing one of these just out of curiosity. After reading through here, it may not happen now. Y'all have me paranoid. I had no idea about all the privacy and sharing aspect of it.
 
Nerdy_81 said:
Wife and I had just recently talked about doing one of these just out of curiosity. After reading through here, it may not happen now. Y'all have me paranoid. I had no idea about all the privacy and sharing aspect of it.
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Big data is everywhere and more terrifying than big brother.
 
mr.hicksta said:
And the idea you actually have privacy is somewhat of an illusion
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You’re not wrong. But feeding more data into the machine willingly is a choice.

On topic, if my privacy could be assured (as much as it possible to) I’d be a little curious, but more for health risks vs ancestry.
 
dazeedmonds said:
You’re not wrong. But feeding more data into the machine willingly is a choice.

On topic, if my privacy could be assured (as much as it possible to) I’d be a little curious, but more for health risks vs ancestry.
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Very true! For health markers the DUTCH tests are a better option, but they’re much more expensive.
 
luvagoodshot said:
If a person did a serious crime then that person should be caught, whether he is a relative of yours or not. I have a clean record and don't mind my DNA being used to advance science and learn more about my ancestors. The rewards are worth far more than any risks that may or may not be present in what I have discovered about my ancestors. I now have my ancestry traced back to the late 16th Century and find it very interesting. Not only have I learned who my ancestors were, and what sort of conditions they lived in,but also why the left the old country to immigrate to the U.S. It's like a lesson in history.
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What's in bold pretty much captures how I feel about it. I didn't consent to any of the other research options aside from letting them keep the sample, but I'm really not too worried about it being stored anyway. My older half sister got her results back a few months back so she's excited to compare results and we're going to get our old man to take one, too. I'm excited to find out more about where I came from!
 
I’ve been researching which kit to get...I don’t care if my DNA is out there, no one is going to want to steal any of that...I’m curious about my heritage beyond “white trash”.
 
SouthernShred said:
I’ve been researching which kit to get...I don’t care if my DNA is out there, no one is going to want to steal any of that...I’m curious about my heritage beyond “white trash”.
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23andme has a discount if you buy 2 kits. They're $49 each, but I'll send you my referral code as well :D
 
DNA Tests

mr.hicksta said:
23andme has a discount if you buy 2 kits. They're $49 each, but I'll send you my referral code as well
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You have my info...I’m curious about mother and father’s side. I didn’t know my biological father at all and my brothers have different fathers. Not a lot to go on other than I’m tall like the next door neighbor
 
SouthernShred said:
I’ve been researching which kit to get...I don’t care if my DNA is out there, no one is going to want to steal any of that...I’m curious about my heritage beyond “white trash”.
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Until you walk by Shred2 in a few years from now & go “WTF?”
 
Nate said:
Until you walk by Shred2 in a few years from now & go “WTF?”
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Nah, I’d be like “Damn, that’s a good looking man...”
 
mr.hicksta said:
What's in bold pretty much captures how I feel about it. I didn't consent to any of the other research options aside from letting them keep the sample, but I'm really not too worried about it being stored anyway. My older half sister got her results back a few months back so she's excited to compare results and we're going to get our old man to take one, too. I'm excited to find out more about where I came from!
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Same here. It's been an exciting journey learning about my ancestors and I hope to dig even deeper to find more about other ancestors of mine.
 
Wake said:
I would love to see the results of doing this, but I'm just not willing to put my DNA out there. If there was a way to do it totally anonymously I'd be all over it.
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I did it willingly because I’m adopted. I have researched my origin story over the years and solved part of the story, but many pieces of the puzzle were missing until I did Ancestry DNA and positively identified my birth father.
 
I've already traced mine back to the 1700's...but I did have a DNA test done on my son 17 years ago
 
My wife & I did the 23andme deal last year. I’m 88% or some such From the British isles and not surprisingly, 1.7% subSaharian African. The rest is Northern European.
My wife however, all eastern block. Very few of those countries left. I knew she was a gypsy, that just proves it.


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luvagoodshot said:
How would that effect you?
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Well, one thing would be the likelihood of some really disturbing bathroom pictures. I mean more than Mancest already shares. Nobody needs that.
 
My problem with all of this is it doesn't really tell history. I mean, if I look at history relative to the Roman empire through the dark ages and enlightenment and into the colonial era, I can reasonably assume I'm a mix of Celtic and Frankish. I know where both sides of my family left the old country from, so I can narrow down history of the past...600 years or so. But classical and post-western Roman Empire, the time that intrigues me most, is lost to both history and, unfortunately, to the evolution of haplogroups that define it. If you're a Celt, you're almost certainly a part of Haplogroup R1b, which could mean Ireland, or it could also mean France, or certain parts of Portugal or northern Spain...and as soon as I say that I'm overlaying modern day national lines over thousands of years of recorded history. If your part of R1a, you're not exactly Slavic...but you might not exactly be Germnic, either. Certain tribes of R1a went into modern day Germany, others integrated into Scandinavia, others became what we consider Slavs. So even though they compare markers to similar markers based on geography, that doesn't mean that's where your ancestry came from.

The reality is that your genetic code has migrated, it's interacted with numerous other codes throughout centuries...and exceptions to this reality are rare. The couple of times I've reached out to DNA testing sites, they were pretty obtuse about breaking DNA tests by haplogroup and more by location, and I hate the idea of being largely from Western Germany, particularly the Alsace region, and being told you're "German." It's just ignorant to history, IMO.
 
And here I thought I was the only golfing conspiracy theorist. My brother refuses to do the test for the reasons everyone has been listing. He thinks it's a government plot.

I'm glad I did though. I know very little about my father's side and a cousin from that side found me and she has been so funny and kind that it warmed even my tiny cold heart.

The missus got her DNA results as well

Native American - 40%
Great Britain - 18%
Iberian Peninsula - 18%
Middle East - 6%
Europe South - 6%
Africa Southeastern Bantu - 4%
Africa North - 2%
Asia Central - 2%
Scandinavia - 1%
Benin/Togo - 1%
Caucasus - 1%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales - 1%

The Great Britain was a bit of a surprise as they don't know where that came from. However next time she tries to pull that Mexican/La Raza ******** with me I'm gonna say whatever white girl!
 
Paladin said:
I hate the idea of being largely from Western Germany, particularly the Alsace region, and being told you're "German." It's just ignorant to history, IMO.
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Like you my relatives initially immigrated from the Alsace region, and I have the names of all my ancestors from that region that can be traced back to the late 16th century. I even know what was going on in that region and the poverty during the time my ancestors immigrated to the U.S. I even discovered a cousin in Tulsa, Oklahoma that I never knew I had until I began looking into my ancestry. I often think of the hardships my ancestors must have suffered, leaving all their siblings behind to immigrate to the U.S. and seek out a better life in a land of opportunity. Back when they immigrated they set out on a sail ship (no engine driven ships back then), and a voyage across the big pond could take up to 6 weeks, depending on the weather. They probably came over with a trunk containing all their possessions and whatever money they saved up to make the voyage.
 
These tests are reasonably accurate as long as you keep in mind they are not telling you what you "ARE", they are telling you how much you match up with some current sample populations in those countries/regions and due to thousands of years of migrations/invasions everyone matches up all over the place. Also, all the services usually greatly overstate Scandinavian ancestry just because everyone in NW Europe has a lot of Viking (especially the more recent Norman) ancestors - so everyone matches up with Scandinavians even if you don't have any recent relatives from there. You only are going to have DNA back to your ancestors around 1800 or so I believe anyway so if you don't have any Skandies there you probably have 5,000 11th-13th century Norman ancestors that settled in the U.K./Ireland. Remember, all those people named Fitz-this or that were Normans.

Gedmatch Genesis is the service recently used by the serial killer investigators, beyond the matching tools, it is also a very interesting website to load your results in and run some of their models (oracles) as they have much more widespread databases including ancient ones to compare to as well as models more specific to Eastern Europe, Africa, etc.

The last thing to keep in mind is your DNA is also a tug-of-war between your parents so if you Mom is 8% Balkan and your Dad is super duper British that Balkan might just show up 3% Italian for you and when you run some of the Gedmatch oracles you might see it pop up as Northern Italian which has a ton of shared history with the Northern Balkan countries.

I've done a bunch of these programs and besides the above mentioned variances and ignoring the small % correlations the programs all make, it is pretty much spot on based on my family tree back to 1800 or so with a mix of German/U.K/Polish as the primary results.
 
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