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Isn't this a non-scary consequence of Ancestry.com-like registries? It's delivering a value people want – relative discovery – and uncovering malfeasance, and
by gojomo 7y ago
Isn't this a non-scary consequence of Ancestry.com-like registries?
It's delivering a value people want – relative discovery – and uncovering malfeasance, and further may be helping to prevent undesirable incest.
That offsets these registries' other scary potential uses, like the risk of them being used to disadvantage certain genetic subgroups, or find wrongly-persecuted individuals.
I would agree that this highlights how scary gamete donation is, when handlers/recipients may not be trustworthy.
- ceejayoz 7y ago> Isn't this a non-scary consequence of Ancestry.com-like registries? It's gonna be non-scary to some, scary to others. Plenty of people donated sperm thinking they'd stay anonymous forever, back before the Human Genome Project was a $1B undertaking.
- umeshunni 7y agoIf you want to stay anonymous, perhaps they should not send their DNA to an Ancestry service?
- jasonjayr 7y agoSure, but if a sibling or another direct parent does, your DNA can be inferred, or close enough to pinpoint you.
- paulddraper 7y agoNot really. If a sibling or parent sends DNA sample X, they do not know what your DNA is. If someone also provides DNA sample Y, they can know that it is the DNA of a relative of X. But...is that really worse than normal life? That's approximate not admissible in court. And DNA or not you can already figure out someone's associates a hundred different ways.
- ceejayoz 7y ago> But...is that really worse than normal life? For an anonymous sperm donor, potentially from the other side of the country decades ago? Absolutely.
- paulddraper 7y agoAt the point you are donating...IDK all bets are off no?
- Izkata 7y agoThe Golden State Killer was identified because of a DNA match to a distant relative on one of these sites: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/27/golden-state-killer-dna-website-gedmatch-was-used-to-identify-joseph-deangelo-as-suspect-police-say/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/27...
- zenexer 7y ago> The two women said they were able to identify him with the help of Ancestry.com as well as “specific and substantive information” from the clinic, according to the lawsuit. > The discovery prompted Dr. Cleary to send his DNA to Ancestry.com, which led him to uncover fifteen other children. Most of them live in Oregon and he has now met three of them. In the press conference, he noted that there may be even more children. The children found him via Ancestry.com before he submitted his own DNA.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoRead about how the Golden State Killer was found. Then review the rates of contamination and mishandling that occurs in DNA labs.