There are some serious facts missing in the story here. When were his parents married? When was the half brother born? Was this a known fling? This was definitely something traumatic that happened, but we are left way too hanging for this to be an interesting story.
When George figured out his dad had conceived this child before getting married — that the child was not the result of adultery — he was excited. "I thought it was the coolest genetics story, my own personal genetics story. I wasn't particularly upset about it initially, until the rest of the family found out, and their reaction was different."
His mother and sister could not handle the information, and his father went against their wishes, dedicating himself to reconnecting with his estranged son. "Years of repressed memories and emotions uncorked and resulted in tumultuous times that have torn my nuclear family apart. We're not anywhere close to being healed yet, and I don't know how long it will take to put the pieces back together."
"George" says: "I would want a warning saying, "Check this box and FYI: people discover their parents aren't their parents, they have siblings they didn't know about. If you check this box, these are the things you'll find."
Yeah, like that would have kept George or anyone else from opening this particularly fascinating Pandora's box.
I believe with 90% certainty that "George" is female.
I have a complicated family background myself (not willing to go into it in public under this handle), but in George's shoes, I would not have pushed this; in particular, I would not have told Thomas about his father nearly as easily.
It's not important, but it's interesting that people reacted quite strongly to it. It was an off-hand comment based on the writing style, tone and perspective, a dozen or more things in the article. I should have parenthesized it, and left it at the end of my comment.
I had the same intuition, actually, and I can't really articulate it either. Interesting that someone else had the same notion.
To the extent that I can back it up at all, it seems to be something to do with the concern George has with how his family feels about this - the interpersonal aspects. Which, when stated this clearly, seems ridiculous, since obviously men can have just as much concern about their families breaking up as women can.
It was just a feeling I had while reading the piece.
* George Doe, rather than John Doe; an alias possibly chosen for gender ambiguity, bringing to mind George Elliot
* Uninhibited display of emotion with emphasis: "fell in love with", "so exited about", "so confused", "freaked out", "immediately felt empathetic", "really devastated" - there's loads more. Men tend to take much less vulnerable verbal positions.
Interestingly, a coworker just brought up this article beside me a few minutes ago (not knowing I'd already read it), and he too thought it was a woman writing.
More than emotions, it was that their lives were being affected in some form: something else was being added to it that was not there when they decided to enter into a relationship. Particularly for the mother, she basically entered into a relationship without all the facts known. Maybe she would have decided differently at the beginning.
Personally, I am not sure why the sister is so upset. It's just another sibling, which should bring happiness. But in a world where lawsuits are common, maybe she also feels threatened (sharing of inheritance, for example?).
I think it is fair that the mother is upset. She has to deal with more "baggage." But I don't think this is worth divorcing over. Things must not have been that solid for this to end up in divorce. A strong marriage should have survived this.
It's probably not a good idea to speculate on the relative strength of other people's marriages, especially internet speculation. We still don't know everything that happened; nor should we. So, let's not pretend that we know what is going on here.
The basis of the story is that with genetic testing with a service like 23andMe you can find things that you may not have wanted to have known or expected. Let's just leave it at that.
> So, let's not pretend that we know what is going on here.
Absolutely. When we make bold assertions like "X would Y" we are bringing a huge amount of personal bias, baggage and most of all ignorance to the table. It blinkers us to the vast range of possible realities that our impoverished imaginations (and our imaginations are always impoverished) are incapable of conjuring.
As an exercise, before posting "X must be Y" it is very much worth-while thinking of half-a-dozen movie scripts that could tell a story that would fit the known facts. In the present case they might look like:
1) Basil Fawlty-like character goes off the deep end upon discovering child from before his marriage
2) Uptight wife divorces husband for youthful indiscretion
3) Husband's former double-life as a spy revealed by accident of genetic testing
4) Husband's former criminal life revealed by accident of genetic testing
5) Christian wife divorces when accident of genetic testing reveals husband was not a virgin at marriage as he had always claimed
6) Radical feminist wife leaves husband when she finds out he once patronized--and impregnated--a prostitute...
The only thing we can say with any degree of certainty is that the reality is far weirder than anything we can imagine. It almost always is.
In none of the above cases would the marriage necessarily be describe as "not strong" prior to being put to the test.
To claim that "a strong marriage should have survived this" is vacuous tautology: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1087. It is true that a marriage strong enough to survive whatever happened would have survived whatever happened. It is also true that a big enough blow will disrupt anything weak enough to be disrupted by that blow (http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr/risk_essay/hymn_strain.html)
True, you can't be exactly sure based on a single case. This might or might not have been a strong marriage. Even very strong marriages sometimes but rarely break up out of nowhere.
But the initial statement is true in a probabilistic sense. A strong marriage most of the time will survive learning about this kind of event that happened well before the marriage started. That the marriage didn't survive is not conclusive, but does suggest that it was probably not a strong marriage.
I don't see any problem with that, as long as there is a clear distinction made between what is known and what is weak likely conjecture (and it's anonymous).
Another article linked at the end of this one mentions a bit more. It says the unknown son was conceived before the writer's mother and father got together and that part of the upset of the family was that the father wished to connect with this new-found son against the wishes of other family members.
I'm sorry, this is just insane then. Divorcing someone on the grounds that they had a child before you were ever together and didn't know about it? Sounds like bullshit. Sucks that this guy thinks he's responsible for breaking up his parents.
If you think that's bullshit, you're not considering all the possible factor, or don't understand how a decades-old marriage works: through lots of compromises, that people sometimes feel unhappy about, but not enough to risk what they've gotten used to.
So maybe the mother had felt (probably for years) that the father wasn't appreciating her enough. And now he's making more effort to connect with this unknown child than he's spent on his wife and other children in years... suddenly the pent-up dissatisfaction comes out into the open, grievances are aired and people say hurtful things that make reconciliation impossible...
It doesn't actually make any implication that Tomas was conceived before they met. Maybe an affair early on in the relationship that the father managed to cover up.
>>Sucks that this guy thinks he's responsible for breaking up his parents.
In this situation I can imagine talking to my father about it, but talking to everyone else in a family was a decision he made. I'm not passing judgment either way, but he wasn't like he was passive here.
It's definitely not his fault, nor the fault of the test in question. No one should entertain a divorce based on circumstances from decades ago, and before you were even together. His parents aren't divorced because of the unknown son, nor his fathers natural inclination to contact him.
Thanks for pointing that out. How that was laid out makes me rather frustrated at Vox because one would expect that the "full" article would be more detailed than a sidebar story in the much longer article about 23andme and the various ethical issues it creates for adopted people and adoptees. Instead, the linked article gives less of the story and the emotions surrounding it, leading more to confusion than anything else.
The other article mentions that this process "uncorked" years of "repressed" feelings. Divorce is often the end product of a long process; it looks like in this case, the genetic discovery was the last straw that broke the camel's back.
The problem there is that lack of information gave way here to fairly extreme and charged claims. Elsewhere in the thread, there were people claiming that the half-brother was the result of adultery, which is pretty high up there on the soap opera scale. Not excising that from this article would have made it a better story.
I also found it strange that they were opening up (albeit anonymously) about something very personal, but not really telling the story in a way that could have engaged us more.
I think the meat of the article is not the human drama that ensued, but the fact that there was an online service, and a button in the UI, that caused far more greater effect to the life of the whole family than just sating 'George's curiosity. Like there was a hypothetical Amazon order form that had an innocent radio button at the end with the legend 'Order free drone strike to the recipients address'.
Not sure that's relevant - that's the reality show part of the story. The point is the product that 23andme sells and the risk associated with it is not understood by their customer. In this case it's lead to a family break-up and therapy for the author.
I've been wondering if any agency in the US government has been using DNA databases to do "genetic triangulation"--and if not, when they'll start.
I'm in 23andme, and I get messages saying "someone who is your 4th/5th/6th cousin wants to connect" all the time. I figure if I was given a bit of DNA from a crime scene, by cross-referencing all of the 4th,5th, and 6th cousins, the number of potential people matching that DNA has got to be tiny.
Science fiction dystopias used to hypothesize a complete DNA database but I'm pretty sure even the spotty coverage we have now is pretty powerful.
DNA storage is a very tricky area ethically. You're dead right that even spotty coverage is sufficient to make all sort of inference, while on the other hand we have much more DNA from crime scenes than we have the resources to process, and when we do process it it can lead to the exoneration of people who were serving long sentences.
Lacko f administrative will ont he part of police departments seems to be the largest part of the problem, if stories of unprocessed rape kits by the hundreds are anything to go by. Thankfully some states have committed to clearing the backlog and not allowing it to build up again.
Computational power probably isn't the limiting resource in DNA analysis (I've known plenty of people who do it in non-forensic applications in the biotech field, and I've heard of various things limiting throughput in any given effort, and computing resources were never on the list.)
ISIS has been using government biometric databases at checkpoints to ID regime agents and execute them on the spot. They had seized facial recognition databases that were largely put together by Americans. When you wind up in these biometric databases you really can't be sure who is going to use it for what. It's not like the data is ever secure.
In the months before Osama bin Laden was killed, the Central Intelligence Agency ran a phony vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan, as a ruse to obtain DNA evidence from members of Bin Laden’s family thought to be holed up in an expansive compound there, according to an American official.
BTW, it appears the CIA has committed to not doing that sort of thing again, as a result of complaints from the public health community about this operation:
A newly disclosed CIA policy mandates that it won't use vaccination programs as part of its operations, according to the Obama administration.
The directive by CIA Director John Brennan, made nine months ago but only coming to light now, followed concerns raised by leaders of a dozen U.S. public health schools in a letter to President Barack Obama.
They spoke out following revelations the CIA had enlisted a doctor to oversee a false immunization campaign in Pakistan ahead of the 2011 raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
So they say. The CIA are liars by trade (like the NSA) and I would give their pronouncements and oaths as much attention as I give their pathetic apologies for their past and ongoing inhumanity. They will break their "word" tomorrow if they feel it is in their best interests.
I'm an American and I'm repulsed by what is often done in my name by my "intelligence" agencies.
> BTW, it appears the CIA has committed to not doing that sort of thing again
I don't think the CIA could ever find another doctor to help it with a similar scheme. Not after what happened to Dr. Afridi. [1]
This doctor has been put thru a living hell. Prison in Pakistan is probably no Sunday picnic in the best of circumstances. But in this case there are allegations of torture involving cigarette burns and electric shocks.
So if the CIA ever approaches anyone who's ever heard of The Information Superhighway, aka The Internet, maybe that new guy will be smart enough to google for whatever happened to the guy who help us catch Bin Laden.
Also, if you believe the claims by Pakistan that the doctor is being prosecuted for crimes other than helping the USA, I'll leave you with how Seth Meyers put it on SNL Weekend Update after OJ Simpson was convicted of robbery in Las Vegas:
Today, a jury in Las Vegas found OJ Simpson
“guilty” on all seven counts against him,
including kidnapping, aggravated assault,
and theft. But really... Murder. [2]
What they have promised not to do is to masquerade as a vaccination program (thus harming the reputation of all who attempt to implement vaccination programs). They have NOT promised to cease using DNA surveillance of relatives to locate a person of interest.
> What they have promised not to do is to masquerade as a vaccination program (thus harming the reputation of all who attempt to implement vaccination programs).
The damage is done. What the CIA promises afterwards is not going to carry any weight where this matters.
> Genetic material obtained through a fake door-to-door hepatitis B vaccination programme reportedly helped the CIA confirm Bin Laden's whereabouts in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
There is a team in Denmark, working on building body and face models from persons genetic code. Stuff like age, height range, skin, hair, eye color, big/small/regular nose, wide/narrow face.
That’s probably not a very reliable proxy for age estimation though (for reasons alluded to by sampo, and simply because telomere length varies across individuals regardless of age). It’s probably much easier and more reliable to measure the accumulation of single-base mutations (SNPs): DNA repair is faulty and such mutations accumulate with age. By comparing the genetic material of several cells across a sample this can be estimated.
However, telomeres are repetitive code, and not amenable to standard PCR and sequencing methods (as far as I know). I don't know if the amounts of DNA or chromosomes typical in forensic samples are enough for the techniques used to measure telomere length. Well maybe they are, if the Danish group is working on this.
Well I think that if the length of the fragment is larger than the repeated fragment, you can get a good idea of the number of repetitions.
This is not a case like CNV (copy number variation) where a whole gene can appear a number of times, so I think this is somewhat possible by PCR (though probably not very precise).
The problem in finding repetitions using PCR is as follows: In order to perform PCR you splice the DNA in chunks randomly, the length of the chunks depends on the particular machine but it's of the order of 100-1000 bases. Then you need algorithmically find superpositions to reconstruct the original sequence.
If the repeated sequence is longer than the chunk you have no hope of knowing how many times it repeats, if on the other hand it's much shorter (I think it's 6 bases for telomeres) you can see a good number of repetitions per chunk.
If you want to know something more detailed about sequencing and CNV I can send you a couple of sections from my PhD dissertation.
Is it possible to do 23andMe pseudonymously? Mail them a money order and use a temp email address? I would never volunteer a dna sample like that clearly tied to my SSN.
I have always assumed that the airport scanners are also collecting biometrics on everyone for video identification purposes and for that reason I try to avoid them.
Funny comment. You want to stay anonymous and at the same time mail someone your hardest to fake piece of ID. There is something really wrong in your reasoning, your DNA is your identity and if any other family members of yours use 23andme as well then your relationship to them could very well be uncovered.
I believe he has some point. Humans generally have multiple (mostly highly-overlapping) [sub-]identities, one per clique. And we usually don't like mixing them too much. We're one person at work, but a bit different one at a close friends' party.
Our genetic data is a part of the picture but not a whole picture. That's somehow in a same manner your photo identifies you, but when you have a photo of random person on a street you're unlikely to easily figure out their name.
That is because a photo can not be linked to your family relationships as a DNA strand can.
So photos and DNA have very different properties when it comes to identity, and barring some stupendously unlikely coincidence (or an identical twin or clone) your DNA is much more unique than your photo will ever be (witness the number of celebrity doubles).
Indeed. However, I think, a wish to not provide a link between your DNA and your name is somehow understandable. Anonymizing a subset of social graph isn't something completely wrong, although, indeed, I agree, it's unlikely to work well, because, it's very likely that only a single node would go without a name.
(However, if all his near relatives would do the same, all one could figure out that John Doe is probably a relative of a Jane Doe. And they're somewhat related to other people with real names, but at least deanonymizing requires more work and other databases.)
A really old skit by a Dutch comedian went something like this:
In old days we had only 1 digit phone numbers in our village. 0 was the operator, 1 was Dr. Jones, 2 was the parish priest, 3 was the butcher, 5 was the greengrocer, 6 was the local contractor, 7 the constable, 8 mrs. Smith, 9 the Jacksons and we had a secret number.
Summary: 23andMe's genetic database may uncover shitty behavior of people close to you that they would rather you not know about. They hide this behind a checkbox asking you if you want to see info about possible close relatives, but the author thinks there should be big flashing warnings that it might show information you aren't ready for.
Of course, the other way to interpret this is that his parents weren't really okay with the status quo, at least one of them either hadn't put enough thought into what happened, didn't know the whole story, or was entirely in the dark. The author may feel that it would be better to not know that information, but that information is truth, and represents who the people involved really are or were. I have little patience for being asked to help support others delusion.
Note that in this case, no shitty behavior was uncovered. I initially thought this story was going to be about adultery, but it turns out it wasn't:
> When George figured out his dad had conceived this child before getting married — that the child was not the result of adultery — he was excited. [...] His mother and sister could not handle the information, and his father went against their wishes, dedicating himself to reconnecting with his estranged son.
I missed that. If that's an accurate description of events and the cause of the rift between his father and the rest of the family, I'm appalled by their behavior. I'm also at more of a loss to understand why the author blames 23andMe. It's just as conceivable the estranged son could have finally found his father through some means that didn't include 23andMe, and the father decided to reconnect and it tore the family apart. Who would the author attempt to blame in that case? The son, for locating his father?
Exactly. This divorce isn't because of the DNA test, we can say that much. Pinning blame to it seems to me like it glosses over far too much missing detail.
No shitty behavior was uncovered? Hasn't anyone considered that Thomas was the product of rape? Or any other thousands of possibilities which we have no idea about.
After reading the second article, which gives more detail, I think that's unlikely. Obviously we're missing information, but it's not stated anywhere that there was foul play of any kind. You cannot just assume something horrible happened unless at least some kind of hint is given in the article.
The author suggests adding a warning about discovering relatives, but then he also admits that it wouldn't have made a difference in his case because he didn't think it would happen to him and he also couldn't have known his family would have reacted the way they did. In the end I don't think there is a technical solution that the genetics testing company can apply to make this any easier for humans to deal with. When you send your DNA to such a company you should be ready to deal with something like this.
They hide this behind a checkbox asking you if you want to see info about possible close relatives
They did. According to the editor, they don't anymore: "[Note: 23 and Me has since switched to an opt out system, where users will automatically be enrolled in the close relatives finder program.]"
>>"My parents divorced. No one is talking to my dad. We're not anywhere close to being healed yet and I don't know how long it will take to put the pieces back together."
We don't know the circumstances under which the father and his then-girlfriend had given up their son for adoption. However, that seems to have happened decades ago.
I'm not sure why no one is now talking to the dad for something that happened decades ago.
I don't think you are meant to. The author is trying to write about the unexpected consequences, not put the consequences on display. It seems fairly likely that the falling out in the family would not have happened without the information provided by the genetic testing (or a similar revelation).
Perhaps he kept it as a secret all this time. Many people regard hiding such a fundamental piece of information for such a long time as a breach of trust. The interesting thing to me about the story is that a morally neutral technology can lead to bitter disagreements by unexpectedly presenting a moral dilemma.
Morally neutral technology does this all the time. Human social interactions are filled to the brim with lies of all kinds- falsehoods, fabrications, lies by omission, etc. Technology is gradually stripping them away.
Genetically it may be difficult to tell a grandfather from a half-brother, but logically it seems like you could easily add some basic checks like "is dude A more than x years older than dude B? No? Well lets rule grandfather out then".
I work for a major genetic research and diagnostics laboratory. This is what's known in the biz as "incidental findings" and in a clinical setting is an enormous no-no (not as big a deal in research).
It's this kind of careless disclosure of sensitive information that makes more than a few of the non-consumer-facing organizations (not to mention the FDA) a bit wary of companies like 23andMe.
I haven't used 23andMe so I can't speak to how well their ordering system addresses this issue beyond what the article states. Regardless, customers ordering these kinds of panels should be well informed as to what they're getting into.
I'm not sure the disclosure (of a related DNA sequence) was careless. In fact, having millions of correlated DNA sequences might prove quite profitable someday.
Although I'm a bit surprised that to remove DNA info, you need to close your entire account, at which point they will "remove all Genetic Information within your account (or profile) within thirty (30) days of our receipt of your request".
Or maybe not:
"Our contracted genotyping laboratory may also retain your Genetic Information as required by local law and we may retain backup copies for a limited period of time pursuant to our data protection policies."
Well, unless you mean that the entities are tired of the companies, rather than cautious of them, in which case, "weary" is the correct word.
Come to think of it, most of the time "wary" is used to refer to reaction resulting from a worrying pattern of behavior, "weary" probably is also accurate, even if its not what the author is most concerned with communicating.
I have a similar situation. I had a close cousin contact me on 23 and me that I wasn't familar with. He is adopted and looking for his parents. My dad took the test so we have narrowed it down. He recently found his mom, so I know it's his dad that I'm related to. Bottom line, we still haven't figured out who the dad is and I'm afraid to push it because it may cause an outcome like this. I invited the adopted cousin to a family reunion but he declined.
Life is way to short to hide behind fear of the unknown. Think of yourself in these shoes? Would you want to be held back by someone well meaning? I personally wouldn't. I can't even begin to fathom what being estranged from your parents feels like and I'm not about to ever get in the way of someone trying to reconcile that if I have even the slightest bit of information that can help relieve that. It's not my place to deny them. If that brings hell to my family, I would tell them to put their big boy/girl pants on and grow the fuck up, full stop and I completely adore my family. This isn't a decision they get to stop, stifle, or refute. Let the estranged cousin make all the decisions. You're there to help empower them to do what they feel lead to pursue, nothing more or less.
I hope none of this feels like a personal attack. At the end of the day you're still entitled to your decision and opinion. I just know how I would feel or act. The feelings of only one person matter in this instance and it wouldn't be me, if I were in your shoes.
Genetic testing is a really cool concept. There is a parallel with the internet, is that for every new person tested value of testing increases for everyone. Sufficient number of people tested should allow us to identify really subtle patterns in genetic code and will be a boon in healthcare and family planning. For example a dating site, that takes genes into account while matching people. Unfortunately there are huge privacy implications to consider.
Gattaca was very prescient and thought-provoking movie, one of my favorites. The story described a future where individuals are allowed or denied opportunity based on a genetic test at birth. I think the point was that technology cannot predict or limit the human heart.
That same idea applies here too. This article illustrates that there will be other, nuanced perils to bioinformatics besides rewarding genetic lottery winners and punishing losers. Genetic testing is a powerful tool that should be used wisely. Of course, it will be a bumpy road until society settles on what "wisely" means.
Well, Gattaca raises a bigger point that just "Should we discriminate based on DNA?" In Gattaca, people can choose to genetically enhance their offspring to attain certain qualities. The protagonist's parents chose to make him in a "natural" way and hence he was considered to be the less extreme version of Untermensch. The director chose to portray such policies / societal norms as morally wrong (primarily through an emotional appeal). But it doesn't touch upon the other side of this issue. How well did humanity perform after humans were artificially evolved into what by some could be considered a new species. Except a few discriminatory cases -- much less than say Women and other minorities experience at the moment -- Gattaca doesn't seem too horrible, with space ships and space colonization. The movie can be thought of as depicting a Neanderthal that happens to be stuck in a Homo Sapiens Sapiens dominated society, and after facing adversity -- eventually succeeds. I think the issue is larger than that. Perhaps it's trying to make us consider the possible collective benefits of Humankind as a whole if it were allowed to fast-track its natural evolutionary processes. After all, if all humans became "Homo Sapiens Sapiens Sapiens" wouldn't we be better off?
People are still forced to work under threat of starvation, upper class people still work in open plan offices, lower class people still handle dangerous chemicals.
Despite space ships the depicted civilization didn't improve a lot. (and that's just the work conditions - leisure time practically doesn't exist in the movie)
IMHO, genetic testing wasn't the cause of the divorce; it was the family's intransigence at the dad wanting to get in touch with his long-lost son. What kind of a people are these, that they'd want to kick the father out for wanting to get in touch with a son he never knew he had, from before the marriage?
I wonder how many sperm or egg donors will register on 23andme and receive an interesting email... Or how many children conceived in that way will find half brothers and half sisters. I wonder if you could see traces of "prolific" sperm donors via their related offspring...
That's very much not my point, which is rather that the proximate cause of the result here was secrets being exposed.
Of course, if secrets aren't kept in the first place, they can't be exposed, and lots of time, while not risk free, a timely voluntary disclosure can produce a lot better results than a involuntary revelation (and involuntary revelations happen a lot more often than people trying to keep secrets think they will.)
There are, additionally, moral issues to consider. Concealing facts material to other people's decisions denies them effective consent, a basic fact which underlies fraud laws, but whose moral scope extends far beyond commercial transactions.
Nobody caused any problems other than people trying to assign blame for something that is blameless. Technology and information are morally neutral but what we choose to do with that information or technology is not.
It said that the Dad had the child before meeting the Mom and didn't know about the child. The problems arose from the Data wanting to meet the child against the wishes of the family.
We're getting flooded with assumptions that the dad knew he had a kid.
Could have been a 1 night stand and he never knew. Of course him and mom could be super religious and swore to each other they're virgins. Or for extra stress, mom 1.0 is mom 2.0's best friend or ex roommate or co worker or something. I dated two roommates in university (not at the same time) and they both knew it, but eventually it was just too stressful and I was spun out of orbit.
(edited for another possibility: One spouse thinks 18 years of child support is a great idea and the other disagrees. Not exactly the first time financial stress collapses a marriage)
Another peculiarity about the story is it has a fixation on:
"people discover their parents aren't their parents"
Well assuming no adoption, birth mom usually is mom, although much more often her husband isn't kids genetic father. It would be quite impressive although possible I guess to discover your birth mom isn't your genetic mom. Maybe an epic fail or record keeping at the fertility clinic, I guess. Statistically it sounds much more likely you'll find out mom's husband isn't dad more than you'll find out birth mom isn't mom.
No, you don't always get caught or suffer the consequences. Many facts go with people to the grave and in many cases this causes less suffering to people. That's just reality. Being able to keep a secret is a valued trait often for very good (as opposed to criminal) reasons.
That's tricky ground you're on there. That's usually called 'lying by omission', you are technically not lying because you have uttered no untruths but you are morally in the wrong because you are withholding information that the social contract in force would expect you to disclose.
Whether secret or known, why should any woman want a man that would be so careless with his own offspring that they end up being adopted by strangers and searching for their parents all their life?
Whether secret or not, why should any woman want a man who has children by another woman?
Whether secret or not, why should any woman want a man who is apparently really bad at using contraceptives?
Maybe it wouldn't have been a divorce, it just would never have been a marriage in the first place. But whatever the eventual result, the problem was that the father was a piece of shit.
Mr. or Mrs. Brady Bunch didn't hide the fact that they had previous children or relationships. Its very possible that the father lied to the mother about having the prior relationship. Its also possible that his previous behavior had nothing to do with the divorce, and it was his current reaction.
Either way, I think the author being a geneticist should pretty much understand that if you're trying to find relatives, you might actually find relatives.
I tend to think this should be opt-in, but as long as both parties have the box checked, it seems like perfectly valid functionality to me.
>Whether secret or known, why should any woman want a man that would be so careless with his own offspring that they end up being adopted by strangers and searching for their parents all their life? Whether secret or not, why should any woman want a man who has children by another woman? Whether secret or not, why should any woman want a man who is apparently really bad at using contraceptives?
Because in the grand scheme of things all of the above are insignificant BS, that could happen to anyone, especially at a young age, without precluding that the man/women who had that would turnup a wonderful person to be with and a good husband.
I mean "why should any woman want a man who has children by another woman"? What are you, 15-years old?
Humans are social animals. Humans often live in societies that value extended families where care-giving towards children are shared amongst a bunch of people who are not the parets of those children.
"We can't be sure, but we've analyzed genes on several of your chromosomes, and its hard to avoid the conclusion: at some point, your parents had sex."
Who has college yearbook photos? I don't remember any yearbook, and it certainly doesn't have my photograph in it. There were something like 25,000 undergrads anyway - how would that even work?
Somewhere, there's a product manager or developer coming to terms with the fact that the decision to check that box by default tore at least one family apart.
Opt-out is really to blame here. Almost everything is opt-out in the US. Go look at how the EU handles data/privacy sensitive stuff: most of the time, it's opt-in.
This is confusing. "This is how it happened: when you share around 25 percent genetic similarity with someone, that means that either it's your grandfather, uncle, or half-sibling".
I have half my dad's DNA and half my mom's, so does my sister. So therefore wouldn't we both share 50% of our DNA? If we were brothers it would be closer to 100%. So a half sibling should be the same as a sister in this aspect. I have a half brother too, so we both got 50% of our DNA from our mother. So we are 50% similar, not 25%.
You got 23 of your mother's 46 chromosomes, and your half-brother got a different set of 23 of your mother's 46 chromosomes. On average 11.5 of those chromosomes will be the exact same ones -- that's 25% of your total DNA.
With a full sibling of the opposite sex, you share about 11.5 of your mom's chromosomes (half of the 23 each of you got from mom will be the same) and 11.0 of your dad's chromosomes (11 of 22; you know the 23rd is different), for a total of 22.5 out of 46 which is 49%.
If you're both the same sex, you share on average 11.5 of your mom's chromosomes and 12.0 of your dad's chromosomes (11 of 22, and you know the 23rd is the same), which makes you around 51% similar.
No, I think your concept of genetics and reproduction is wrong. You receive a random 0.5 of genes from Dad and your sibling receives another random 0.5 from Dad. This means you share 0.25 from Dad.
I'm amazed at people preferring living under a lie for the rest of their lives and dying like that than finding out the truth in case it might be bitter. I would trade a supernuclear family for truth any day of the week.
Slightly off topic, but no wonder it's also difficult to make people realize the reality about religion(s). The same 'ignorance is bliss' head-in-the-sand mentality is working behind the scenes many times.
>I would trade a supernuclear family over truth any day of the week.
This is interesting. If you had an incredibly happy life, why would you always choose potentially emotionally damaging truth over that? Especially if the alternative is that you never know there is a lie and that lie doesn't actually matter.
I have a hard time envisioning 'emotionally damaging truth'. More truth is always better, even if it is uncomfortable. Operating on un-truths can be damaging, truth should allow you to function better, not worse.
The problem with this story is that effectively nothing had changed that wasn't already there.
I found out my dad had been married prior to being married to my mom. It's a long and interesting story but it never made me think less of him (insofar as that was still possible), in fact in some ways it redeemed him and made me understand him a little bit better.
I've never understood the dynamic between 23andMe and the FDA. It's just information - what's to stop someone from setting up the same service in Bermuda? Would they really stop Americans from mailing a spit kit somewhere?
23andMe has not proved that the information it provides is sufficiently accurate. It makes claims about an individual's susceptibility to various diseases, and furthermore it markets itself as a reliable source of information (which the FDA takes to mean, a tool for making decisions). The FDA's mandate is if someone makes that claim, consumers should be able to rely on it. That has not been satisfied.
The issue with the FDA is saying "Since you have this gene your chance of X disease is 5%" when there are other factors that influence this and this hasn't been evaluated by a doctor.
And then people making decisions solely based on this number.
As other people have said, genetic information is powerful and scary to most folks. Most diseases have a host of genetic factors that also interplay with environmental factors, and the outcomes of these interactions are not rigorously understood. So 23andMe is a cool idea but may be overstepping the data.
Plus most people are not able to interpret what these genetic risks mean for them, so delivering the results directly (not through a doctor or preferably genetic counselor) is risky. People tend to think of genes as laws or rules, as guarantees, when really our genomes are complex if-then clauses (if this chemical hits this receptor transcribe that bit there). What if someone decides to get a double masectomy because of BRCA mutations? That's a traumatic, expensive procedure, and maybe riskier than the cancer risk; in any case, it's a decision that should be made with a medical professional.
Finally, 23andMe inexplicably flipped a big old bird to the FDA, their own regulatory agency, by NOT RESPONDING TO THE FDA FOR 6 MONTHS before the warning letter. That's just irresponsible and foolish.
Biotech has a crazy amount of regulation, but I think 23andMe deserved this one
Because "just information" can be incredibly damaging in lots of ways. This is why most ethical systems include guidelines for determining when it is okay to share information with others and when it is not.
In this particular case, the FDA appears to be concerned that 23andMe are essentially providing the sort of information known as "medical advice" without sufficient context. And (regardless of whether they are correct in this case) that sort of thing can be dangerous.
You are right about the "context" of the information. Test results need to be shared with the individual by a trained genetics counselor. Interpreting genetic results requires knowledge of the subject and ability to express complex and emotionally charged information in a sensitive and ethically appropriate way. Not much fudge room there.
Another aspect is FDA standards of procedures and accuracy of test results for genetic conditions (where gene frequencies are known). Presumably 23andMe would have show that it meets those standards in order to provide the related results. Most likely to be more trouble than it's worth to them.
While PSA testing may help 1 in 1,000 avoid death due to prostate cancer, 4 to 5 in 1,000 would die from prostate cancer after 10 years even with screening. Expected harms include anxiety for 100 – 120 receiving false positives, biopsy pain, and other complications from biopsy for false positive tests. Of those found to have prostate cancer, frequent overdiagnosis is common because most cases of prostate cancer are not expected to cause any symptoms. Men found to have prostate cancer usually (up to 90% of cases) elect to receive treatment. Therefore many will experience the side effects of treatment, such as for every 1,000 men screened, 29 will experience erectile dysfunction, 18 will suffer urinary incontinence, 2 will have serious cardiovascular events, 1 will suffer pulmonary embolus or deep venous thrombosis, and 1 perioperative death.[5]
According to 23andMe (or at least their marketing) it's accurate medical information. The FCC wants them to prove that or stop marketing it as such -- a request that is beyond reasonable.
If that's the only issue, why did 23andme remove all medical information, rather than simply adjusting their marketing to say "this is all experimental, take it with a grain of salt"?
I'm just trying to think about what would happen if those parents in the story were me and my wife. Would we break apart? I'm guessing/hoping no, but the real answer may be completely different.
To clarify, other estimates put misattributed paternity in the range of 1-4%, but that's still a whole lot of marriages (especially considering that most marriages have multiple kids).
While that may be true, that is not what happened in this case. I also thought that was where the story was going based on the title, but it's not where it ended up. The author found a half-brother: before the author's father married his mother, his father put up a baby for adoption with a former girlfriend.
On one hand, I believe that people have the right to know the truth to things; on the other hand, not many people are able to really handle the unpleasant ones.
Sometimes I wonder, did forgetting/hiding of the hard truth caused the inability to handle them? Or because of?
I just visited the site and their promo video at the top of the front page is all about two sisters finding each other. You cannot fault this company for finding unknown relatives. Hell, I know my dad was married/divorced before he married my mom and I want to do this to see if anything pops up, but will probably wait until the medical screen is available again.
Note: They currently do not offer the medical checks due to government audit or something.
The issue is health-related genetic information must be given to the individual by a qualified genetic counselor. Informing an individual about genetic health risks requires counselors with adequate training re: potential outcomes associated with the genetic factors and ability to express these facts and concepts in plain language.
To me that seems a sensible standard to uphold, and obviously not a task a company like 23andMe could responsibly accomplish. Perhaps there could be a mechanism for the test results to be forwarded to a qualified counselor who could go over the results with the individual who provided the genetic sample.
> 23andMe said my most elevated risks — about double the average for women of European ethnicity — were for psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, with my lifetime odds of getting the diseases at 20.2 percent and 8.2 percent. But according to Genetic Testing Laboratories, my lowest risks were for — you guessed it — psoriasis (2 percent) and rheumatoid arthritis (2.6 percent).
> In the case of Type 2 diabetes, inconsistencies on a semantic level masked similarities in the numbers. G.T.L. said my risk was “medium” at 10.3 percent, but 23andMe said my risk was “decreased” at 15.7 percent. In fact, both companies had calculated my odds to be roughly three-quarters of the average, but they used slightly different averages — and very different words — to interpret the numbers. In isolation, the first would have left me worried; the second, relieved.
Indeed, the line from the movie was "you can't handle the truth" meaning I shouldn't tell you because in my judgement it will be harmful, directly colliding with your right to know the truth if you wish to know it.
It's not a trivial matter at all. Recently I discussed this with a friend who teaches genomics. He was excited about the possibilities of applying genomic knowledge in the public health arena. The idea was testing newborns, even before delivery (in utero), to spot potential health problems and use the methods available to address them.
I pointed out the ethical quagmire this is going to expose. People have a right to know, and as much not know, what their genes might reveal. Forcing people to confront predictions of illness or differences with social implications will be a nightmare to deal with.
The case presented in the article is merely the tip of the iceberg of ethical dilemmas. We certainly are living in interesting times.
weird this article came out after buying pre-nov2013 kits off ebay so we can see our health information....last night my wife and I just spit into our 23andme kits and we shipped it out this morning. Wish me luck on the truth! :)
Also note that if you are not able to get such a kit (or even if you are) you can download the raw text file from 23AndMe and run it through Promethease from SNPedia. It is not nearly as clean and curated as 23AndMe but it's still interesting.
Thanks, yeah, that's pretty cool. I just watched a Youtube video on how to export raw data from 23AndMe and search for things on SNPedia. As long as 23andMe keeps the export option around I won't be spending a lot more for a kit from ebay. :D
There is an encouraging side to this agony: At least
some of the people in that family cared, really cared, about
the issues of intimacy (that is, open communications in the sense of
giving knowledge of themselves to each other, as in
E. Fromm, The Art of Loving),
honesty, trust, fidelity, etc. This fact is "encouraging"
because now it is far too easy to conclude from
various circumstances, stories in the media and/or
tabloid media, the hookup culture, etc. that
in US culture these issues have been regarded
as meaningless, that any sexual behavior is no
more meaningful than, say, a game of ping pong,
that the standard marriage vows are just
lines in a stage play comedy/fantasy, that
a couple stays together only so long as
the combination of money and sex are appropriate,
etc.
YMMV, and not everyone agrees,
but there is a body of thought that
the fundamental problem of life is
doing something effective about
the anxiety of feeling alone, that
the best solution is the joining with
and love of spouse and the associated
family and its bonds (as in common
marriage vows), and that
love making, especially causing
conception of another human, is
a crucial part of family formation,
bonding, joining, love,
and security against the anxieties
of being alone. Then infidelity,
dishonesty, deception, violation of
vows, etc. are torpedoes just below the
water line of a Good Ship Loving Home and Family
and, thus, a disaster for all involved.
Net, good to see, even with the agony of this story,
that some people still care about
the ideals of a traditional family.
It is easy for someone to be fooled
about traditional views of
love,
home, and family, that is, regard these
views as so good, beneficial, and attractive,
nearly universally, that a candidate life
partner would also leap to embrace and
honor the views. Alas, too often too many
people fail to see and/or act on such views.
Art is sometimes defined as the communication,
interpretation of human experience, emotion, and
some of the strongest emotions have to do
with the family and love issues here. Then,
we can find some art that communicates the
agony of love, home, and family destroyed.
E.g., there is the Renata Scotto
performance of the aria
"Un bel di vedremo"
from the Puccini opera
Madama Butterfly as at
Apparently Puccini was correct that
audiences would see the reasons for the
agony expressed in that aria;
that is, many in the audience would
understand that love making was one
of the most important issues in all of life
and that
often casual sex
was quite serious and not at all casual.
Similarly for the intimacy of
giving knowledge of self,
honesty, trust, fidelity, etc.
To me, good to know; to me,
regarding traditional marriage vows
and love, home, marriage, and
physical love making as
casual or just a joke
is rot in the foundations
of our society. So, it's good to
see that not everyone accepts such
rot of our society.
It feels as if you're just using the story to see your own preferences confirmed. For all you know from the facts as displayed by the story that was a perfect family and the dad never knew he made the woman pregnant. It is also possible the mom had several sex partners before the marriage and did not get pregnant. It may not have been all that casual, relationships do end.
So if you want to draw unfounded conclusions go right ahead but the story definitely does not confirm your chosen beliefs.
In fact, if there is one thing that you can take away from this story it is that mere information was capable of destroying one of those homes full of love you're going on about without either partner ever breaking their marriage vows.
> It feels as if you're just using the story to see your own preferences confirmed.
In part, right.
> For all you know from the facts as displayed by the story that was a perfect family and the dad never knew he made the woman pregnant.
Strictly speaking, yes. But we have to expect that usually the man will know if the woman he had sex with did get pregnant. E.g., legally he can be on the hook for supporting the child until she/he is 18. Also if the couple was intimate enough to conceive a child, then typically they are also intimate enough to communicate that they did conceive a child.
> In fact, if there is one thing that you can take away from this story it is that mere information was capable of destroying one of those homes full of love you're going on about without either partner ever breaking their marriage vows.
Strictly speaking, yes. But the story is not very complete in the details, e.g., we don't have dates. So, a guess from the story is that the child discovered was the result of adultery within the marriage; indeed, otherwise there was relatively little reason for the discovery to break up the marriage.
Whatever did happen when, adultery or not, that the marriage did break up does indicate that at least one of the partners cared a lot about the issue of the so far unknown child; that is, someone really cared a lot about, if you will, 'traditional family values' whether there was actual adultery or not.
Yes, some relationships can be both not casual and broken up. But one of the main reasons for a relationship is 'commitment' where both partners believe that with their relationship they have a long-term, not just a 24 hour, solution to 'the fundamental problem of life', doing something effective about feeling alone. Then, being casual about a relationship ending shows too little understanding of much of the reason for a relationship, that is, knowing that have the problem of being alone solved for 24 hours, 48 hours, a week, a month, a year, a decade, for life. Indeed, lots of details in our legal system are to this end thus indicating that some people value such commitment. Or, a relationship should not be like a car that just trade in on a new model -- pun intended. Such a trade in has to suggest that the origin of the relationship involved a lie, that is, a false claim or suggestion that there was love in the sense of commitment. Indeed, some people who pursue and defend casual sex do admit that one of the main issues is not lying, that is, being clear that the sex is just casual, say, like playing a game of ping pong, and not a commitment for the future.
For your last paragraph, why did the information destroy the home if there was no adultery and, really, the father was not aware of the pregnancy? So, since the home did break up, I have to suspect that there was some deception involved, either adultery or at least just deliberate lack of communications, that is, deliberate concealment. Such poor communications is a lack of intimacy and, thus, a lack of intimate love and, thus, a bad biggie for the relationship. Or, as in E. Fromm, the couple is supposed to give knowledge of themselves to each other, if you will, take all their clothes off between their ears.
I have to return to my broad view: Casual sex isn't; sex is serious; really there's no such thing as casual sex. I'm pleased that some others see something at least similar.
From the other comments you can see quotes from a version of the story showing that there was almost certainly no adultery.
The rest of your conjecture is mostly you applying your own bias to an absence of information. It's a circular argument to use that to support a sense of traditional values.
For all we know the previous relationship was years long and not at all casual. Unless you're going to interpret any non-marriage relationship as 'casual' I don't think you have any evidence in favor of your main point. Especially since this shows a sliver of failed intimacy utterly destroying love and marriage vows. It's not like the man was living a double life, this is something that never came up. To say that their multiple decades of intimacy were not good enough and this shows the true importance of intimacy is nothing more than No True Scotsman.
And I severely doubt that it shows the importance of sexual intercourse either. Just the importance of children, which everyone (to first approximation) agrees with.
Not everyone will agree with my preference for traditional family values, which is fine. Still, I'm not following you:
I'm not getting your answer to the question of why
the sudden knowledge of the child conceived, say, before the marriage, broke up the (long) marriage? My answer is that either (1) evidence of adultery or (2) (as you claim is argued in this thread, no adultery so) lack of open communications, that is, lack of that part of intimate love. To me, answer (2) looks tough to believe. That is, why break up love, home, and marriage over a love child conceived before the marriage, especially given the chance that the man was unaware of the pregnancy? Since you also don't like answer (1), adultery, I'm left without knowing what your explanation is.
My personal preferences aside, if adultery is the only believable answer, then it looks like someone regarded adultery as a really serious problem, enough to break up love, home, and marriage, and, thus, evidence of strong respect for (my) traditional family values.
And, you lost me on a second point: It seems that you are saying that the important glue of a romantic relationship, with marriage or not, is having children and not really just sexual intercourse. In that case, given that the marriage did have children, why use sexual intercourse, with children or not, from adultery or not, as a reason to break up the marriage?
I'll try to be more clear: A traditional view of much of the meaning of sexual intercourse is the implied bonding and, thus, joining of two lives. It's mostly the promise of long term love, bonding, joining, security, etc. that makes sexual intercourse attractive and important. In this way, sexual intercourse becomes important in the marriage, even without children yet or ever. But in part you seem to be saying (1) what is important about sexual intercourse in the marriage is any resulting conceptions yet (2) are saying that loss of love and home, beyond considerations of children, is a tragedy. So, it seems that with (1) you are saying that sexual intercourse without children is not very important but with (2) you are saying that loss of that part of love is important. You seem to be saying that Bob and Martha can have a great marriage with three great children, still are swingers and have semi-public sexual intercourse with a crowd of strangers or casual friends, yet break up their marriage once there is knowledge of a love child conceived before the marriage. I can understand traditional values and even swingers, but I can't understand how such parts of those two can be combined in one marriage.
Hardly. This is a story about how 23andme is a good way to find out things you wish you'll never find out, and about how 23andme screwed up their find-your-relatives feature and didn't seem to care about what happened to this poor guy.
This is a story that makes you think twice about whether 23andme is a cool, fun purchase/present.
Long time 23andme user here (one of the first genotyped customers). 23andme's interface is extremely clear about what data is/will be made available to you, and what the possible consequences are.
If that's all it was, they would have picked a happy story instead. It's also a serious actual cautionary tale, one that isn't entirely helpful to 23andme.
It's fantastic that, in this enlightened age, the simple fact that about 30% of people, across cultures, have wrong idea about their biological father, is still deeply suppressed.
This is why such ad hoc testing has been prohibited in many countries (Germany, most recently.)
Yes, about every third reader of this is deluded about her/his biological father. Deal with it.
The source of the 30% statistic is from a selection-biased sample of people who undergo paternity testing because there is already a question as to who is the father. It's not an accurate figure.
Other comments[1] in this thread seem to mention very different percentages. Is there a difference between what these numbers mean that I'm not aware of?
That what happens when you put the algorithms in front of people.
Didn't it cross anyone's mind that such things would be uncovered? Or that it would always "be cool"? Opt-out? Really?
Money and technology before ethics.
But I'm still left with a question. What does "25% similarity" means? I mean, humans have more than 99% in common genes with the Chimpanzee, so is this a specific set of genes or what exactly?
It's 25% similarity within the 1% of variation that makes you... well... you.
The human genome is ~3 billion bases long (haploid), so even looking at that 1%, that's still millions of possible variations. Only close family members will have significant overlap.
What 23andMe measures are single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These are variations that are known to occur within the general population. For each of these positions, they can tell if you are homozygous (2 copies with the same ACGT), or heterozygous (One copy A, and another T, for example). Once you take all of that SNP data, you can get a good estimate of how closely related you are to another person. If you share the same patterns, you're likely related.
50% similarity would only be possible between a parent and a child. 25% would be likely between half siblings.
I assume it's tracking chromosomes. Humans have 46 chromosomes, and each chromosome is basically a copy of one from our parents, plus some mutations. You can count the average rate of mutation per generation (which is very low, something on the order of 100-200 total mutations in the entire genome), and then count the differences between one chromosome and another chromosome. When comparing genomes for two individuals, you'll get a low number of differences for some chromosomes and a higher number of differences for others.
So when I hear 25% similarity, I'm thinking that it means that 25% of the chromosomes for person A are very similar to chromosomes for person B, and that the remaining chromosomes are not as similar. This is just relative similarity, the overall similarity will be quite high.
You're right about the relative similarity (and that's the key point), wrong about the number of chromosomes being involved in the 25% calculation. It's about the proportion of bases (letters in the sequence) that can differ between two people that actually differ between these two people. See mbreese's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8293159
The switch to opt-out is quite unconscionable but also expected as the company's main motivation here is gathering data and having as much data as possible, regardless of consequences that they cannot be sued over. I'm sure there'll be similar stories in the future.
Well, people are not algorithms but neither they are animals. Conceptions should be better planned or otherwise punished. Nothing worse then raising other guy's child unknowingly (I know article was not about that).
I'll be brutally honest - dishonest people will always pay for their misbehavior. Lies and secrets always get uncovered. Smart people always think decades ahead. Decades ago, it was clear that DNA testing will be daily business, so, simply, you're gonna pay for doing things without thinking, sorry. That's how it should be anyway. When you do genetic testing, you need to be smart enough to understand what it could reveal to you - both positive and negative. But, hey, let's sue and ban services like 23andMe just because stupid people do stupid things! Like it's not a harm already to us already that FDA removed health information (well, for new customers, at least) from 23andMe. What I cannot get is why health information is not allowed even for new customers abroad who are not a subject of worries for FDA? Things like this will force innovative companies in the field to move outside of highly and insanely regulated United States where people, for example, remove their breasts just because Angelina Jolie told them so! I am talking in general, not about this specific article. All my family members have 23andMe testing during the early days and still have access to the health information (although it doesn't seem like it's being actively updated). There's http://www.snpedia.org/ and http://www.promethease.com/ that kinda feel that gap now. Anyway, I've go immense value out of 23andMe, found out a lot of health information about me and my family and I'm afraid that stupidity of some can lead to negative consequences in this area! In your personal life, at least, be open and honest, it prevents cancer, and it makes you immune to certain types of "discoveries"! It's that simple!
If you read the article, you would know that this story does not come from dishonest acts such as adultery, but instead a complex set of emotions playing out between a family.
