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Another Perspective
We Are Family
We’re all DNA testers now.
Already distracted 24/7 by iPods, tall lattes with extra foam, the download of special apps, and reality TV, Americans have found a new form of entertainment and national diversion. As recently reported, cheap do-it-yourself genetic testing is now mainstream and in vogue. Once the domain of forensic experts, anthropologists, and others sincerely seeking the secrets of their past, self-administered DNA testing for some is now a hobby — just like building model ships and trains and collecting butterflies.
Doubtless, the subject has gained new traction with the momentous discovery in central England of the remains of Richard III, the English king. Using just a swab, scraper, and spittle, one can now extract enough DNA to establish potential linkages to the rich and famous.
Using biomedical science to seek new relatives seems based on the revolutionary notion that existing relatives are not enough, and that one yearns for more of them. This has huge implications for feeding families that convene at Thanksgiving and Christmas — and indeed for the meaning of the family as a societal unit.
Perhaps this new form of outreach is a symptom of loneliness. In a well-wired world of about 7 billion people, where new friendships are as easy to establish as the click of a mouse, we still do not have enough social engagement. Even with social media allowing unbridled narcissists to pretend, we still long for even larger audiences and more adulation — confirming the principle that more is less, and not enough.
The ironies for new self-esteem are limitless. A homebody might discover that he or she is related to Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, the famous Anglo-Irish explorer of the Antarctic in the early 20th century, or to Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealander who was first to scale Mount Everest. An awkward dancer might even discover Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers as relatives.
While popularized DNA testing may ultimately be deemed a good thing, there is also a potential dark side. Seeking self-aggrandizement, it is not hard to think that an opportunist might claim Bill Gates or Warren Buffett as ancestors. And imagine the shock if someone discovered that he or she were related to the unphotogenic North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.
There is no limit to the way such DNA testing might be conducted. Office and factory workers could take DNA breaks instead of the more mundane coffee break. Fast food companies and others with vast consumer franchises could offer a DNA swab with a burrito or mocha cappuccino. Automotive companies could provide DNA testing kits as standard features in every glove compartment. Further, DNA testing would also give new meaning to the late 1970s disco era hit by Sister Sledge, “We Are Family,” in which it is affirmed that “everyone can see we’re together.” Because DNA testing can be performed while reading a desktop monitor or handheld device, it may therefore be added to the panoply of multitasking activities. Home DNA testing could also allow new social bonds to be forged, like pajama parties.
As with any new and successful enterprise, there will be need for judicious oversight and government regulation. House and Senate committees could expand their already burgeoning control agendas in an unrelenting desire to monitor and interfere in even more human endeavor, passing DNA regulatory bills without even reading them. It is also not difficult to imagine a new Administration czar or cabinet post to elevate national DNA testing, giving it White House sponsorship. Democratic strategists might seek to broaden the scope of DNA testing, identifying yet another voting segment of the population wanting sponsorship, while the “I’ve got mine” Republicans could claim enough existing ancestral linkages and attempt to block the march of science.
About the Author
Frank Schell is a business consultant and former international banking executive. He serves on the Dean’s International Council of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, where he is a lecturer, and on the editorial board of the Chicago-based National Strategy Forum, which focuses on national security issues.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (14) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 2.20.13 @ 6:27AM
Even more entertaining: you'll find the mother who gave you up for adoption and the father who raped her (and he may find you), you'll discover that your father isn't your father and so will your father; and the police will find out who's been setting all those fires on your block.
Stuart Koehl| 2.20.13 @ 6:55AM
It doesn't really work that way (nor is it possible for it to work that way). It would be good to talk with an actual genealogist who uses one of these services to get a real understanding of their utility and limitations. By itself, these DNA matches don't tell you much, but they are useful for confirming tenuous or ambiguous genealogical links by comparing surnames on family trees that have reported genealogical matches with one's own. But someone must first go through the trouble of assembling that family tree the old fashioned way--through birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, land deeds, immigration records, etc.
Most people subscribing to DNA services right now don't do that, and must be sorely puzzled by what they get--a rough breakdown of their genetic ancestry by region (Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, East Asia, Middle East) or ethnicity (Jewish, Native American, Coptic, etc.); a list of names, and the percentage of matching genes. Pretty thin gruel for those wanting to pry into the details of their ancestry, particularly as the odds of inheriting a particular strand of DNA decrease the farther back one goes.
JP| 2.20.13 @ 11:51AM
In a New York Times piece that ran a few years ago, the reporter found quite a few younger people were getting these tests to see if they had some exotic ancestry. Most of those that found they had African DNA were esctatic. For they could now declare kinship with the politically correct.
What is ironic is that 8 decades ago we castigated the Nazis for the very same practices (God help the German who had a great-great-great-great grandmother who was Jewish).
Stuart Koehl| 2.20.13 @ 6:40AM
So, I'm confused. Was this article intended to be bad reporting, or bad parody, or both?
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.20.13 @ 8:50AM
I'm thinking a deadline for a contracted article came due while the regular editor was enjoying a long holiday weekend.
Arnie| 2.20.13 @ 7:35AM
This article is just straight up crap. That's all you need to know about it.
ncatty| 2.20.13 @ 9:53AM
If all conservatives get tested it will prove that we are related to John C. Calhoun.
markenoff| 2.20.13 @ 10:05AM
Arnie said it's crap and Arnie is always right.
Pecos Pete| 2.20.13 @ 10:56AM
DANGER ALERT! DANGER ALERT! Save sanity.
DNA Control now!
N8tivTxn| 2.20.13 @ 10:59AM
Methinks this "service" is likely aimed at those prolific procreators of the entitlement class...
What was that show that was cancelled, before it hit the air...
Who's Your Baby's Daddy Momma or some such...
Hardly anyone mentions it out loud, but there is a breeding frenzy going on.
JP| 2.20.13 @ 11:46AM
French biologists in 1991 discovered that roughly 16 million people on earth carry the same DNA as Genghis Kahn.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 2.20.13 @ 2:01PM
...the man who put the Rape in Rape & Pillage, apparently...
sinz54| 2.20.13 @ 1:55PM
There's a serious reason for many Americans to do genetic testing now, and that's to deal with a brand new problem: Accidental genetic incest.
There have already been reported cases where a man and woman fell in love, got married, had sex--and THEN discovered that they were actually related: Because both of their moms had employed the same anonymous sperm donor. Hence they were half brother and half sister. At that point, they had to contemplate annulling their marriage--or else be charged with incest, a felony.
There are some anonymous sperm donors who have fathered over a hundred children each, most of whom being born in the same geographic region as the donor. Thus there is a small but nonzero probability that at least two of those children may meet and have sex--without being aware that they are related genetically. They will be committing incest without knowing it.
Since many moms don't tell their kids the truth about how they were conceived, genetic testing prior to sexual relations is the only way to prevent genetic incest.
Who Knows?| 2.20.13 @ 2:06PM
Forget DNA.
That’s so yesterday.
Right NOW, with every breath you “take”, you suck down an atom that was once Hitler, Stalin, or Beethoven---name your own (and owned, for a while?) old and dead human.
So what?
You still don’t really know what anything IS. That’s the saving grace, even AS whatever is arising, and despite what you take yourself to be.
It IS so much fun to come to Realize how Absolutely Ignorant “you” and “I” are---read “Godel Escher and Bach”, by Douglas Hofstadter, the Pulitzer Prize winner, from 1979.
Godel deserves to be more widely taught, and what he produced needs to be understood.
“The discovery of Godel-numbering has been likened to the discovery, by Descartes, of the isomorphism between curves in a plane and equations in two variables: incredibly simple, once you see it---and opening onto a vast new world.” GEB, page 263
Humans long ago realized a flat earth was wrong. Just so, today, humans live under another false “view”, which doesn’t take Godel into account.
DNA---self referencing: so what?