Increasing numbers of people are paying money to have private companies test their DNA in order to tell them what 'branches' of humanity they are connected to. Is this wise? Why are they doing it and what do they hope to gain by it?

Wendy Kaminer argues in the August/September 2005 issue of Free Inquiry that the emotions which drive this are connected to those which drive tribalism, discrimination, exclusion, and even bigotry:

Today, some may seek information about their genetic predispositions to disease, but traditionally people have tried to construct their family trees out of a mystical belief in the salience of bloodlines or some other imagined spiritual connections with the people who preceded them. ...

[I]t is precisely this special sense of connection with ancestors who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago that I find so irrational. Maybe I’m missing the genealogy gene, but I feel no more connected to my eighteenth-century forbears than to yours. I’m only interested in ancestors I knew or the ancestors they knew, and my interest in them focuses on familial dynamics, not bloodlines or genes.

I have to confess that I harbor some interest in who my genetic ancestors might be — not enough to send my DNA someplace for testing, but if someone was able to simply tell me the information, I wouldn’t hesitate to listen. I am not, however, interested in the sense of thinking that I have a mystical connection to some tribe.

Instead, I am simply interested in knowing more of the details about how I am connected to humanity as a whole. I don’t feel especially connected to my eighteenth-century forbears, but through them I am connected to everyone else — and I don’t think that it’s completely irrational to have some interest in the nature of this connection. Perhaps Kaminer has made a mistake in not taking such a perspective into consideration.

Kaminer also argues that in a society where compromising the privacy of one’s personal information is becoming increasingly serious, it’s rather strange that people are willing to hand over their DNA to a private company like this. Privacy is promised, but security breaches have become almost common where credit card or Social Security numbers are concerned. What real protection do people have where their DNA is concerned?

There’s a treacherous paradox underlying the booming business of genealogical DNA testing: The search for identity puts identity at risk. People volunteer their DNA in the belief that identity resides partly in their distant ancestries; and, in doing so, they jeopardize whatever privacy — and protection of identity — they might retain.

The practical benefits of learning about one’s genetic ancestors are dubious at best — and that’s being very generous. I’m curious, as I noted above, but it’s certainly not worth the price that this companies put on the service. So people really aren’t getting anything of great value when they hand over their genetic information. They receive promises about how their privacy will be protected, but are such promises really credible? People should think a bit harder about what they are doing when it comes to this sort of thing.

Read More:

• Bioethics
• Privacy & Autonomy