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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.

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.

dkh 2y ago
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
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  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-incest/677791/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/dna-tests...
  - aucisson_masque 2y ago
    That’s definitely interesting to learn you are the great great son of an incest !
vinni2 2y ago
Did you find out your cousin was gay through 23 and me or from him?
- dkh 2y ago
  This is not the sort of thing a genetic test can determine
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    Give it time...
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      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.
      - BurningFrog 2y ago
        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.
        wizzwizz4 2y ago
        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.)
  - asdfasvea 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
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dkh 2y ago

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

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
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-incest/677791/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/dna-tests...
- aucisson_masque 2y ago
  That’s definitely interesting to learn you are the great great son of an incest !

vinni2 2y ago

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

dkh 2y ago
This is not the sort of thing a genetic test can determine
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  Give it time...
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    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.
    - BurningFrog 2y ago
      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.
      - wizzwizz4 2y ago
        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.)
- asdfasvea 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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