Home DNA Kits

[twoliter]

Have any of you used any of those home DNA kits (not to prove it ain't your kid) from 23andme, MyHeritage, Ancestry.com, etc.? Any thoughts on their worth? Any one better than the other? Sounds pretty interesting to me.

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[austintr]

Have any of you used any of those home DNA kits (not to prove it ain't your kid) from 23andme, MyHeritage, Ancestry.com, etc.? Any thoughts on their worth? Any one better than the other? Sounds pretty interesting to me.

I thought this concept sounded pretty interesting at first, but I chose not to try any of these services after learning about the general business practices of the companies. Basically, they don't make money off the kits. They profit mostly from selling bulk DNA analysis similar to metadata, mostly to insurance companies and advertisers that may want to target certain genotypes. Sounds very Orwellian indeed, but this article from SA does a decent job of summarizing how these things work (though it has more of an editorial tone rather than analytical): www.scientificamerican.com/article/23andme-is-terrifying-but-not-for-the-reasons-the-fda-thinks/

 

[pgg]

My brother sent some of his adopted mutt dog's DNA off to some company for a breed analysis.

So far he hasn't been inundated with specialty dog food junk mail.

 

[deleted126335]

Would be interesting to send some animal DNA to one of these companies, telling them that it was human DNA and seeing what their report looked like.


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