So this isn't directly resultant from 23andMe but it's hard to overstate just what a revolution has happened in genetics in the last decade. The specific subfi

So this isn't directly resultant from 23andMe but it's hard to overstate just what a revolution has happened in genetics in the last decade. The specific subfield I'm talking about is genetic genealogy. In the late 20th century, genetic testing was a revolution but it was a simple test. Given two samples X and Y it produced a boolean function: f(x, y) -> { 1 if they match, 0 if they don't This led to a number of convictions and exonerations. it has been a huge boon for both criminal prosecution and justice. So what happened in the last decade is the development of a more sophisticated function: f(x, y) -> [0, 1] showing how related they are This most famously led to the identification of the Golden State Killer [1] and also helped identify victims of the Bear Brook murders [2]. In the space of 10 years this went from not existing to being a massive labour-intensive process to a trivial process. The use of this is now almost routine thanks to the likes of GEDmatch [3] Beyond this, there's a whole bunch of ethical implications. Privacy covers things like what a DNA testing site can do with your data. This may potentially impact health insurance access in the like, particularly in the US (sadly). But the really interesting part of this is that a person may be identified criminally or for insurance purposes without ever having uploaded a DNA sample through relatives who have. For example, if two cousins on both sides of your family have the recessive gene for Cystic Fibrosis, it increases the probability you do too (though simple Bayesian reasoning). It's going to be interesting to see what comes of this because it's still early days. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Brook_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Brook_murders [3]: https://www.gedmatch.com/ https://www.gedmatch.com/