Saturday, December 16, 2017

What have I done?

My daughter gave me a DNA test kit for my birthday this week.  I had asked for it because I'm interested in what it might show about my ancestry. The kit I used is from 23andMe and the instructions were easy to follow.  I spit in the tube and mailed it off today after skimming their very lengthy disclosures, registering on line, and agreeing to their terms.  I also answered a lot of survey questions and generally thought the whole process was pretty interesting and harmless. That was until I watched "48 Hours" this evening.  It involved, among other things, the ordeal a young  man went through when his DNA was almost a match to that found at a murder scene.  What caught my interest was that he came under suspicion, not because he had any criminal record, but based on a near match with his father's DNA which was on a public DNA search site, in this case Ancestry.com.  I'm not really too worried about this. My children and grandchildren are all law abiding citizens as far as I know.  I did find another of the company's disclosures interesting.  They warned that they are not liable if you don't like what the test results show. The example they used was discovering that your father wasn't your biological father.  I'm not worried about that either since, as far as I know, my dad never had his DNA analyzed so I'll never know if we match or not.  I have no reason to suspect that we don't.  I will however be surprised if my results don't show a large percentage of German ancestry.  I'm looking forward to getting the results. Stay tuned.

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