Show of Hands

Everyone's been saying good stuff. I'm definitely going for it.

I usually talk good. Dis one time I messed up, yo.

Just your friendly officer stopping by to make sure everyone is using grammar safely! 😜

Good job, Deputy Shoeless! We'll have to see about getting you some black uniform dress shoes!

⚜ ᎢᎻᎬ ᏩᎡᎪᎷᎷᎪᎡ ᏢᎾᏞᏆᏟᎬ ⚜

Oh, speaking of personal freedom, vote Johnson

He's my second favorite candidate :)

I think my dad used them years ago.

That sucks, I didn't know they changed it. I mostly wanted to learn future disease stuff.

They've started releasing the disease reports! I have about 50-80 reports available to look at, I believe.

They did? Awesome! Was it pretty comprehensive?

Well I'm sure there are plenty of reports that still haven't been released yet, but you'll get access to those once they do.

Thanks Kim! That'll be really interesting.

Thanks Obama

Have you tried it? Were you happy with the reports?

Yes. My brother, my wife, and I all did the full screen. We've enjoyed it, but you have to take the health results with a grain of salt (they do a good job explaining why).

Another friend of ours did it too. Her claim that she was part Native American got blown out of the water. 😆

Lol I'd be crushed if I found out I wasn't really Italian after all. Were the health reports pretty thorough?

They report on SNPs, small nucleotide polymorphisms. Simple point mutations in genes that may correlate with traits and disorders.

An example, my moms side of the family have all known about issues with wet-AMD with age. Both I and my brother have the gene variant. He's going through some eye issues right now.

Some links between SNPs and disease are stronger than others. So,e are pretty reliable. Others, not so much. They give you percentages.

Right on man, thanks. You guys all made this a lot easier.

I've also been "introduced" to 2nd and 3rd cousins living in areas where we know we have a family history.

Also, it lets you know how much Neanderthal DNA you have (I kid you not).

Honestly just curiosity. I'd like to learn about both, heritage and potential diseases.

23andMe and Ancestry are the most popular, and they're $199/$99, respectively.

Online. There's 23andme.com for $100 and ancestry.com (I think) is $200 but I'm sure there's others. They send you a kit where you swab the inside of your cheek and mail it back. Then they send you a report with info like heritage and potential diseases.

Beat me to it Mr. L 😜
Do you know anyone that's used these?

Ask RJ (see his comment above) about it, and what the differences might be.

I don't know anything about 23andme, but I wouldn't recommend Ancestry at all. Or at least do the free trial, don't pay them. When I tried it, there was very little information on my family, and absolutely nothing regarding genetic predispositions/susceptibility. I kinda just saw it as a bit of a scam once they wanted me to start paying their outrageous fees.

I also don't recall anything about there being an option to send them a DNA sample... But I used it several years ago now so that might be a newer feature

23andMe, at least, is a "spit" test (saliva), currently, not a cheek swab.

I just read a personal story about it on Facebook this morning, that outlined what was involved, and what kinds of things they *do* and *don't* send you in the results. It doesn't, for example, give results regarding *all* possible known disease-causing (or risk increasing) mutations, although it does give some of them. I haven't been able to relocate that piece, but I'll give it another try.

If you stumble upon it again let me know. It would be great to see if it's worth it or not.

I'll look some more.

I had the opportunity, some years ago, to be one of the first of a smallish number of people to have their whole genome sequenced, and the sequence put online for the use of approved researchers. It was supposed to be a non-public site but a couple of photographs and other potentially identifying information were involved (not names, though), and for the sake of my *family's* privacy I decided not to do it, in case of data breaches. Well, that reason, and the $1000 fee - sequencing was still very expensive and that was to offset it. There were "scholarships" available, though.

I regret not having done it (I'm always up for participating in research studies, in non-invasive ways), in spite of the privacy issue.

.

That's funny, my mom said almost the same thing "they'll know all about you!" I'm going to give a shot anyway though (dont tell her) :)

Some people have even more of those concerns today, because it's expanded beyond a limited number of researchers into commercial businesses. I honestly don't know how much data is shared (if I remember right, the piece I saw this morning talked about an *option* to share with researcher, implying they don't do it automatically), or how good the integrity of the data or any related web sites are.

Right, I can get why some people would want to protect their info. I probably wouldn't let researchers look into mine but if the data was breached I guess I'm not overly worried, personally.