Category Archives: Personal genomics

The screenshot to the right is from my updated 23andMe results. The inference that my ancestry is from “Chittagong Division” is 100% correct. More precisely, my family is from Comilla. […]

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Unless you have been sleeping under a rock, you know the saga of David Shor. You have read about him in New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine again. Shor’s firing by Civis Analytics was so craven that even social justice scolds think it was ridiculous. But there is another aspect of David […]

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China Is Collecting DNA From Tens of Millions of Men and Boys, Using U.S. Equipment: The police in China are collecting blood samples from men and boys from across the country to build a genetic map of its roughly 700 million males, giving the authorities a powerful new tool for their emerging high-tech surveillance state. […]

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In the spring of 2010 I began to “eat my own dog-food.” By this, I mean that I entered the world of “personal genomics.” I ordered a bunch of kits from 23andMe for myself and my family. I didn’t have too many strong expectations of surprises. One thing though I did suspect: my parents would […]

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It’s been a year and a half since the Golden State Killer was arrested. That was a big day in the genetics community, as genealogy was leveraged for forensics in a big way. One of the people who I began to have discussions with regarding this development was my friend David Mittelman. Since then David […]

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Just noticed that 23andMe and Ancestry have “Prime Day” deals.
Will be super curious if the sales are off from last year. It seems that DTC as a sector is leveling off. Perhaps saturation, or the privacy issues?

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In the spring of 2010, I went to the studios of KQED in San Francisco to record an interview with a radio show on the BBC about PGD. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. I haven’t thought much about the issue in the near ten years since then. Which in a personal sense certainly reflects my luck and […]

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In the spring of 2010, I went to the studios of KQED in San Francisco to record an interview with a radio show on the BBC about PGD. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. I haven’t thought much about the issue in the near ten years since then. Which in a personal sense certainly reflects my luck and […]

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Recently I was talking to a journalist about genetic genealogy, and we both agreed that soon Christine Kenneally’s The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures will need an update. Though published in 2015, much of the research in The Invisible History of the Human Race dates to much […]

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A new piece in The Guardian, ‘Your father’s not your father’: when DNA tests reveal more than you bargained for, is one of the two major genres in writings on personal genomics in the media right now (there are exceptions). First, there is the genre where genetics doesn’t do anything for you. It’s a waste […]

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The figure to the right is from the comment David Mittelman and I wrote for Genome Biology, Consumer genomics will change your life, whether you get tested or not. The original numbers are from ISOGG, which does a great job collating information from a variety of sources. When final revisions for the comment were due, […]

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In 2013 David Mittelman and I wrote Rumors of the death of consumer genomics are greatly exaggerated. This was in the wake of the FDA controversy with 23andMe, and continuing worries about DNA and privacy. Today David and I came out with a new comment in Genome Biology, Consumer genomics will change your life, whether you get tested […]

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A very long piece on the “personal genomics industry.” Lots of quotes from my boss Spencer Wells, since he has been in the game so long. The piece covers all the bases. I actually think some of the criticisms of direct-to-consumer genetics are on base. I just don’t think they’re insoluble problems, or problems so […]

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There’s a debate that periodically crops up online about the utility, viability, and morality of returning results from genetic tests to consumers. Consumers here means people like you or me. Pretty much everyone. If you want to caricature two stylized camps, there are information maximalists who proclaim a utopia now, where people can find out […]

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With 23andMe’s new update to its ancestry, the results for my family have changed. Not for me, since I’m not of European descent, and this looks Euro-focused (no surprise). But my wife and kids are different. My wife has two great-grandparents who were born in Norway. 23andMe is picking that up immediately. It also picks […]

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In case you were sleeping under a rock, 23andMe got FDA approval for DTC testing of markers related to BRCA risk. Obviously, this is a pretty big step, in principle. But the short-term implications are not that earth-shaking. From the FDA release: The three BRCA1/BRCA2 hereditary mutations detected by the test are present in about […]

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Happy Hanukkah! My main qualm with wishing you a happy holiday is that I’m a thorough assimilator and I don’t want to be disemboweled. For the context, listen to the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode on the Maccabean Revolt. As a Jewish friend of mine once observed, the Maccabees were kind of the […]

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Happy Hanukkah! My main qualm with wishing you a happy holiday is that I’m a thorough assimilator and I don’t want to be disemboweled. For the context, listen to the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode on the Maccabean Revolt. As a Jewish friend of mine once observed, the Maccabees were kind of the […]

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The results to the left are from 23andMe for someone whose paternal grandparents were immigrants from southern Germany. Their mother had a father who was of English American background (his father was a Yankee American with an English surname and his mother was an immigrant from England), and grandparents who were German (Rhinelander) and French […]

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The results to the left are from 23andMe for someone whose paternal grandparents were immigrants from southern Germany. Their mother had a father who was of English American background (his father was a Yankee American with an English surname and his mother was an immigrant from England), and grandparents who were German (Rhinelander) and French […]

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Razib Khan