You order a kit, and when it arrives, you do a cheek swab and send it in. It also costs about $200; I’m curious as to whether anyone here has done it, and what your experiences may have been with it.
I have a relative by marriage who did it (and didn’t get any surprises) but don’t know of anyone else who has.
A fool and her/his money…
Any group which brags:
Is about as sleazy as a used car salesman in a polyester plaid sports jacket. Think Herb Tarlek.
Were do we put the “only”? In “direct to you”? or maybe “FDA Standards”? I’m guessing the item is “FDA Standard” - it has all the fields the FDA requires. The data in those fields may be utter crap, but the fields are there!
And what the HELL does the “23andMe” mean/refer to?
Overly cutesy - which 23? and what does it have to do with “Me”?
Yep. Didn’t get any meaningful information. I get messages from people that it thinks are my 3rd or 4th cousins every once in a while who are researching family history. To date, the number of these people that I could link myself to: 0.
YMMV
I did one of their much earlier tests because I got a free voucher. Learned a bunch of mildly interesting trivia but nothing actionable.
Humans have 23 chromosomes.
Link.
I did it a few years ago, because they wanted information from people with a relatively rare genetic disorder I have.
It gave me a bit of fun information (apparently I have some Mongol ancestry!) and led to a thousand requests from people that I’m distantly related to asking me for information to help fill out their family trees.
When my father also took the test a few months later, I got even more detailed information (and the troubling news that I’m only 48.7% genetically related to him, which skews a bit of my understanding of how babies are made.)
I would say that I certainly wouldn’t pay for it, but I’ve occasionally considered having their test run on my daughter for funsies. Certainly not at the $200 price point, though.
My wife had one done for my grandson a few years back. At the time I think the kits were only about $50 - apparently the price hike has to do with the FDA approval? Recently my wife, her dad, her sister, and one of her cousins have done it, so now they are all comparing notes.
Sheds some light on their margin of error, though.
Here are a group of people who took the test so you can see the kind of information you get.
I did it and found it totally worth it. I’ve known my background was mixed European, but I don’t know a lot about my family history and I’ve always wondered the details of my background. The results weren’t wildly off what I was expecting, but there were a few interesting surprises. Mostly, it’s just nice to finally know and not to have to speculate anymore.
I did it when the health information was included (it seems they’ve re-started providing that?). I’ve found I’m low risk for a few scary things that have occurred in my family, which is a relief. And I found one thing that I am higher risk for that I will definitely keep an eye on. It’s not conclusive life-changing information, but it’s stuff that may make the difference between my going straight to the doctor with a symptom rather than writing it off. Note that it is important to really understand how this information is reported and what it actually means. Some of it is rather solid, and some of it is very speculative, and it’s important to understand which is which.
The “traits” section is pretty fun. Useless, but fun.
If it’s not big money for you (look for sales!) and you have unknowns that nag at you, I’d’ say it is worth it. But if you already have done a lot of genealogical work or otherwise understand your origins, it probably isn’t.
“FDA standards” is a pretty specific statement, basically meaning that they’re legally allowed to market a medical test.
There’s a fair bit of recent controversy and its resolution tied up in that statement though. In brief, a few years ago the FDA told 23andme to stop offering “medical tests” to consumers. From their perspective, any genetic testing that provides information about disease risk that could affect a medical decision needs to be regulated to ensure validity and accuracy (IMO rightly so). That started as a relatively friendly request from the FDA saying “please meet with us to assure us you’re meeting regulatory standards”.
However, 23andme took the spectacularly stupid approach of pretending to ignore the FDA for several years. The FDA eventually shut them down. After a little while, the FDA allowed 23andme to provide raw data and ancestry analysis, but nothing medically related. 23andme finally went through the proper channels to get approval for genetic tests for a few specific diseases.
Also seconding that it was totally worth it. The traits section is largely amusing. But, the genetic markers for diseases is one that’s probably worth knowing. I found out that I’m an APO4E heterozygote which increases my Alzheimer’s risk significantly; though 23andme for serious ones like this or BRCA (breast cancer) has you double confirm that you really want to know the answer (“Are you sure you want this revealed? Yes/No”). Some of the genetic markers are silly, because they’re for diseases that you’d be quite sure that you have by now; it’s hard to imagine how a person would need 23andme to diagnose their PKU.
It’s important to keep the percentages in mind (23andme provides them), so that when you see you have a 3X chance of some disease, you realize that you go from having a 0.1% chance to a 0.3% chance.
The geography stuff largely confirmed what I already knew. But, it’s fun to look in the comments section in their website regarding all the people who “know” that they are Native American, but 23andme says otherwise. Yeah, turns out your 1/4 Cherokee grandmother was a liar.
I have not and don’t intend to but a very Italian friend of mine did. And guess what, he’s totally Italian. No surprises and he found it to be not worth the money.
Note: I don’t know if he did 23 and Me or some similar genetic test.
I did their earlier test (only about $100 at that time) just before they were told to stop giving out genetic health risk information as part of the results. So I did get those results, which weren’t very interesting in my case.
I did find out one fairly big genealogical fact that I didn’t know before, which is that my great-grandfather, who emigrated from Germany, was genetically Ashkenazi, and therefore probably born in a Jewish family.
My connections with “relatives” is pretty much like Snake-Hips - lots of 4th to 6th cousins, no actual shared connections that we could find. Thinking about it, 4th cousins would share one common great-great-great-grandparent. How many of us could make those kinds of matches on our own anyway?
How IDIOTIC!
Who are these idiots that ban everything they can? That is why Europeans think Americans are so stupid - everything which is allowed there is banned here…
Speaking of Europe, what is the European equivalent? I could guess they do not ban any results there?
I did this when it was on sale for $100. I’m adopted and, at the time, had no idea of my ancestry. I’ve never viewed it as infallible / Holy Writ, more as an interesting entree into possible genetic / cultural background. Now that I’ve found my birth-mom and asked her about my heritage, I’ve noticed that it squares well with what I discovered via 23andme. It was worth the money to me, especially when I didn’t know if I’d ever find out the genetic / heritage information otherwise.
What’s idiotic about the regulation of medical genetic testing? Inaccurate results and interpretation can directly lead to a lot of harm. If people are told that they have an increased disease risk, based on bad information, a lot of individuals will go to their doctors and get unnecessary tests. That’s a big waste of time and money, not to mention the harms and risks of more invasive testing. On the other hand, if people are told that they have decreased disease risk, some will avoid going to the doctor and getting treatment for otherwise manageable conditions.
Without regulation, any asshole with a bit of lab experience and a few thousand dollars worth of equipment can sell genetic tests. Since I’m sitting in a biology lab right now, I could do any sort of genetic test with a few bucks worth of reagents and a few hours of my time (and I could trivially run tests in large batches). Just mail me a cheek swab wrapped in a $50 bill. (That’ll be a $10 bill once I drum up enough [del]fools[/del] customers to get some economy of scale.)
How much do you trust some asshole on the internet who says he’s a biologist? Would you stake your health on my assurances that “I’m pretty good in the lab!” Why, it’s been at least a few weeks since I’ve last mislabeled a tube! And I’ll totally get this undergrad to figure out how pipette by the time they’re going to process *your *sample.
I had mine done through Ancestry.com back in 2012, and I think it was $100. Anybody know if there are significant differences between their test and 23 and Me’s? Hell, are they the same test?
Are you seriously suggesting that Europe has a more lax regulatory regime than the United States? Excuse me while I spit out my cup of coffee sweetened with Aspartame and rBGH doped milk that I had for breakfast with my GMO fruit loops colored with red and yellow food dyes.
I’m not sure that there is an error there. Because humans inherit mitochondrial DNA only from their mother, everybody has fractionally more genetic material from Mommy than Daddy. Also, the X chromosome carries more genetic material than the Y chromosome, so males get a slightly lower percentage from Daddy than their sisters do. I don’t remember the exact percentage, but assuming Boozhol Squid is male, around 49% Daddy / 51% Mommy sounds about right.