Genetic testing isn’t the exclusive realm of 23andme, you can get it done through a medical provider as well who doesn’t have such privacy-violating terms.

Right now, yes. But early in 23andMe's history (I got it done at the very beginning) they were pretty much the only game in town. They were the first to make such a service widely accessible to the public, and they helped establish the market in which better alternatives would eventually emerge.

I don't tell anyone now to use 23andMe specifically, but the warnings and risks being discussed here apply to existing customers, to people who have already done it, and I am just speaking as one of those people.

How does genetic testing help connect with biological relatives - that only works if there's a database people signed up to ?

If you're talking about finding specific biological ancestors (names) then yes.

But certain general ancestral data can be deduced from variations in your DNA that are observed in some known current/historical population. I.e, I share much in common with people sampled from Scotland -> I must be Scottish.

People are warned not to put much trust into the ethnicity estimates, sometimes even by the services themselves. Telling western Europeans apart is hard.

It's either matching to specific people in the service's reference group who have declared that they are Scottish, or it's trying to guess based on the mix of ancestral populations 2000+ years ago ("western hunter gatherer", "early Neolithic farmer" etc.)

Maybe for those in the US, or at least parts of it. If there's an option for the other 8 billion people that's at least as good as 23andme from a medical perspective, I think a lot of people on HN would be very interested to learn about it.

Your experience may be unique but I don't think it's exactly rare.

I'm just another random anecdote, but I also found I had Factor V Leiden through 23 and me. Also, I'm gay, and for a long time was the only gay person I knew in my extended family. Through 23 and me I discovered a 2nd cousin who also is gay, and I met him in real life and it was an incredibly meaningful and important experience in my life.

One of my good friends discovered her biological half-brother on 23andMe who she had never been told about. They met up, and got along remarkably well, and have actually remained pretty close since! These things do happen. Glad you got something out of it, too.

Yeah, these experiences may or may not be rare. I was positing that they might be rare mostly to try to meet the person I was responded to halfway and because I don't actually have evidence one way or the other

While perhaps not as immediately "positive" an experience, there was a bunch of press last year about how consumer DNA tests were uncovering that incest was much more common than previously believed:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/dna-tests...

That’s definitely interesting to learn you are the great great son of an incest !

Did you find out your cousin was gay through 23 and me or from him?

IIRC, his first and last name were visible to me in 23 and me, so I googled him and saw that we was a therapist with a focus on the LGBT community, so then I messaged him through 23 and me, told him a bit of my story and asked him if he was gay.

This is not the sort of thing a genetic test can determine

Give it time...

It might not happen. Fingerprints are partly heritable – immigration delay disease, for example, has an identifiable point mutation – but you'd be laughed out of the room if you tried to suggest that given time, we would eventually be able to predict fingerprints from genomes.

Non-heterosexual behaviour can be observed in most social amniotes, even those without fingerprints. Genetically-identical twins do not have identical sexual proclivities. There's no a priori reason to believe there's even a "gay gene" to find.

I looked it up, and twin studies say sexual orientation is party genetic, but it's far from the only factor.

So at most a perfect genetic test could give a percentage chance of someone being gay/straight.

I guess that's pretty much what you said.

And either gayness is evolutionarily beneficial (kin selection?), or it's so fundamental to amniote psychology that evolution can't get rid of it. (Or both, I guess.)

So you're saying they aren't born that way but it's learned? DSM2 called and something something something.

That is very much not what is being said.

Similar situation, I did a number of tests( ancestry, myheritage, 23andme, etc) the information it provided answered many questions, and introduced people I never would have expected to my family tree (half brother/sister, etc).

23andme had little data on my fathers side so it split my mothers side into my family tree at the great grandfather level. I spent awhile tracing people only to discover my father and mother side seemed to be related. After going on Ancestry I was able to figure the mistake.

Myheritage had European links. 23andme North American links. Ancestry had everything. The genetic time period they match against are different. 23andme matches against 100ad while ancestry 1200ad. So if you are Celtic perhaps your people were in Spain in 100ad but in Ireland or Scotland by 1200. Using different services gives you a fuller picture and understanding of human migration and your migration. The difference from 23andme telling you you are broadly northwestern european vs Cornish/Welsh/Scottish is huge but illustrates what you match against really changes your identity.

I get the medical angle, but I cannot understand why it would matter to know that some distant ancestor may be from scotland. Is that really worth turning over your detailed biological build plan with all its flaws to some shady cooperation?

Do you have any examples of people being harmed, or are you just spreading FUD?

Try reading some on history from the 1940s, ask yourself if that might happen again, and reevaluate what your parent post says.

You're being paranoid and spreading FUD. Whichever angle you're trying to work, this is not a gay or Jewish problem. Israel itself was supposedly developing an ethnic bioweapon, so if anybody should be afraid it's everyone except Jews.

https://web.archive.org/web/20020428094626/http://www.wired....

Indians are most at risk of genetic exploitation. Hiring managers won't need to ask annoying probing questions about your family to sniff out your lineage if they can just look up your DNA profile to see what caste you belong to.

The caste system was put in place 1900 years ago but after the mixing of populations so caste system identification through dna isn't really possible.

And Jews were self identifying and dna isn't going to tell you if you are gay or not.

Ethnicity can be easier discovered through last name, visual clues rather then stolen hacker data.

The fears are similar to fears around your commodore 64
accidently logging into a war games scenario and destroying the world.

> Ethnicity can be easier discovered through last name

Most people in Russia who identify as Jewish and/or emigrated to Israel have non-Jewish last names. You really would never know if they didn't file the paperwork.

There are political parties in the world today speaking of remigration based on citizenship of family up to 3 or 4 generations. The data from 23andme would fit this purpose perfectly.

23andme data is not ancestry.com data. They lump you into groups from 100ad. Hard to match to country origins when groups are broadly called northwestern european which combines Ireland, UK, Sweden, France, Germany, Sweden, etc into one group.

Wouldn't they use the citizenship data they have from the last 100 years? If they used 23andme data wouldn't they have floods of people from US, Canada, Australia, who could claim a new citizenship?

I worry more about Google, Facebook, mobile apps, cell phones tracking location, interests, activities putting it together for others to buy.

These tests do not do a full detailed analysis if you want that you need to find a clinic and pay thousands of dollars. For what they do tell you I wouldn't be afraid for the entire world to see.

Discovering who you are, where you came from, discovering who your relates are, what your last name is, where people with your genes live now, the backstory on how your wave of immigration came and where they settled and why has been worth it.

The information exposed by 21andme was profile and ethnicity information. I'm okay with any of that becoming public, the public part of a facebook profile shares personal data. Actually I wish more people would ask me about my ethnicity data. I think it would make a great addition as a facebook profile section and if facebook still allowed developers to create profile addons I would create one.

As an aside does anyone remember catbook addon?

> profile and ethnicity information. I'm okay with any of that becoming public

You are probably aware that at least two European countries no longer collect this information, and the reasons for introducing this policy?

Not aware or the reasoning. I looked it up. This article talks about the countries that do and don't.. why black lives matter is protesting in Germany over it.

https://qz.com/2029525/the-20-countries-that-dont-collect-ra...

My guess would be to protect European identity from the reality. Europe has a different level of acceptance of foreigners and a history to protect. I can accept their compromise because of their political situations.

In Canada it's promoted. In the US it gets combined into American identity and promoted in Europe it's hidden.

GP is not assessing who did or did not, he's expressing valid scepticism about proportion of people that give the issue much though being any high.

You being a sample of one doesn't give you any position either, but I won't be suggesting reserving your enthusiasm.

Your descendants are now uninsureable for thrombosis related ailments ?

Another DEI measure inhibiting the free meerkatly goodness soon to go?

Shouldn’t people predisposed to speeding pay more for car insurance?

Are you actually condoning this practice?

Speeding is a choice, one that's extremely easy to change, and it ultimately an exceedingly trivial matter.

You are born with your genetics, and you can’t change them. You are them. They will likely impact how and you die. All you can do is be aware of them so you can try to be proactive.

So there’s really no comparison between that and voluntarily driving a car too fast

If that’s genuinely how it worked, where the more health problems you are at risk for, the more money you have to pay, this would result in the people who already have the shittiest stuff to deal with in their lives having that compounded by also having to pay more than everybody else.

Not sure what more needs to be said, but if there is anyone out there who is unconvinced, I probably won’t be inviting them to dinner parties anytime soon

Is it fair that life insurance for 90 year olds is rather expensive? Yes, because the foremost purpose of insurance is the quantification and management of uncertain risk.

If someone has a higher probability of getting sick / dieing / getting in a wreck then the risk is different and should be priced accordingly. If you don’t, you’re not taking about insurance anymore. You’re talking about a wealth transfer system where good drivers subsidize the bad.

Tomato tomato. It's insurance on a societal level - the guarantee that your children, for example, will still be able to afford a medical policy the same as everyone else can even if they lose the genetic or developmental or whatever other lottery.

There's no divine directive that states that risk sharing must be done by voluntarily joining a pool run by a private entity that's priced uniquely per individual. That's merely one way to go about it.

To be fair it's the only sensible way for a private entity to go about it in the absence of legislation that prevents others from being more efficient. In the case of the US specifically, as long as everyone is forced to play by the same "inefficient" rules the free market will continue to work.

No? Speeding tickets I can see the justification for, but to implement this they do this kind of thing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

Speaking of practices which ought to be illegal but somehow aren't.

Uninsurable where? In the US most people get their insurance through group policies, either through their employer or through the government marketplace. Life insurance companies might be able to make use of your DNA information to alter rates, but I don't see how medical insurance would be able to do so.

The very link you’re sharing says it doesn’t apply to life insurance, disability insurance, and long-term care insurance.

Quite right. The comment to which I replied said, "I don't see how medical insurance would be able to do so" and I was adding a data point.

I'm totally with you on the value prop at the time we signed up. I was more surprised that it sounds like you are reluctant to delete now, when the company is going through an unpredictable transition.

Did I get that right? If so, is there an ongoing value you want to maintain, or it more out of respect for the organization that provided you value in the past?