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23 and me, or other service? Login/Join 
Experienced Slacker
posted
For those of you that have tried it, what would your review be of 23 and me?

Is there a different service you would recommend and why?
Thanks-
 
Posts: 7486 | Registered: May 12, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
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I took the 23andme full testing and got the results earlier this month. Came out with some cool info. I took a copy of the report to my doctor and she was impressed. You have the option of the ancestry testing ($79) or the ancestry/health testing ($179). You sign up, pay for your kit, they send a kit, you spit into a vial, then send the vial. Takes about 6 weeks.

There are a TON of questions to take after you get your kit, but before you get the results. When you get your results, you get a huge amount of data that'll tell you the possibility of a health issue and the breakdown of your family lineage. They predicted that my sister was my sister (sounds funny, but they didn't know she was, her married surname is different than mine), and a guy that should be my 1st cousin, who I found out was adopted and might be my aunt's child, an aunt that I met once when I was around 5. The breakdown of your lineage is by Northern European (& what region), Southern European (& what region), Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, etc. My dad's grandparents, his mom's parents, were from Norway, so I thought I was 25% Norwegian. Not so. I knew one of them was from Bergen & one from Oslo, I looked into that and I found out Bergen has a large German population, which showed up in my testing. Never knew I was German. Or Irish; haven't figured that one out yet.
The company updates the database as they get more info, so it's not one-and-done. Not sure if it's for everyone, but it was really interesting.
 
Posts: 77 | Location: South Florida | Registered: April 12, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Festina Lente
Picture of feersum dreadnaught
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We did it for my daughter, who we adopted ~9 years ago from Hunan China.

Genetics were as expected. We were looking for family.

We found a girl four years older in Holland, also adopted from Shao Yand - they share a grandparent.

Closest thing to a blood relative she's got - they've been in contact by e-mail.

Pretty cool result.



NRA Life Member - "Fear God and Dreadnaught"
 
Posts: 8295 | Location: in the red zone of the blue state, CT | Registered: October 15, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Honky Lips
Picture of FenderBender
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I did it a long time ago when it was only 99 bucks.

I'm glad I did it.
 
Posts: 8144 | Registered: July 24, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Muzzle flash
aficionado
Picture of flashguy
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I am a member of a Yahoo! Group called the "Casteel Privateers" (our first ancestor on these shores was a Privateer for Queen Ann). They are an active genealogical group and have used all of the various DNA tools out there. They seem to think that 23 and Me is one of the best.

flashguy




Texan by choice, not accident of birth
 
Posts: 27902 | Location: Dallas, TX | Registered: May 08, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
It's not you,
it's me.
Picture of RAMIUS
posted Hide Post
My wife got me 23 and me for Christmas. Health plus genealogy, and all the rest. Took 4 weeks to get all the results.

I'm not really sure why I wanted it, my parents are both from the Ukraine (via Ellis island) and I grew up knowing that I was 100% Eastern European etc...and this test just confirmed it and really didn't add anything too exciting.

I could see how it'd be really interesting if you really didn't know your ethnicity or genealogy. But for me, it really didn't tell me anything I didn't know about myself. Still kinda cool to have I guess. It's a very detailed report too.

One thing that was incorrect was that it said I was likely lactose intolerant, which was wrong.
 
Posts: 7016 | Location: Right outside Philly | Registered: September 08, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Stangosaurus Rex
Picture of Tommydogg
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My wife got me a kit. I'm 99 percent Irish and Engrish. 1 percent African. I now identify as a Mandikan Warrior!


___________________________
"I Get It Now"

Beth Greene
 
Posts: 7840 | Location: South Florida | Registered: January 09, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Bad dog!
Picture of justjoe
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I did Ancestry, rather than 23& me. When I did it, it seemed to have better reviews. The surprise for me-- very Italian-- was that I am 13% Scottish/Irish.

I can't say it has changed my life in any way, but it was sufficiently interesting for $100.


______________________________________________________

"You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone."
 
Posts: 11106 | Location: pennsylvania | Registered: June 05, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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We've done them all. I'm adopted. My daughter is handling it. Here's what she said regarding pros/cons of each:

23andMe - Excellent for just ancestry (and health if interested). Great site navigation, great tools. Paints your chromosomes with your ethnicity results so can see where each is located. Can adjust confidence settings on ethnicity results. Gives ancestry timeline that is generally accurate. Gives your haplogroups (women just get maternal) so can learn your direct line and helps with ethnicity. Neanderthal percentage and traits for fun. Shows who you connect with and where they are from. Gives relatives and allows for various levels of privacy. Triangulates common relatives for you if they are sharing their results. Gives ancestor locations and surnames when people provide them. Great for people of different ethnicities and best test for Asians. Has chromosome browser. Results can be phased to parents or child for higher accuracy for all involved and then you are shown who is paternal/maternal etc. Cons: people not sharing, some ethnicities get missed especially Middle Easterners, not uncommon to get large "broadly" categories when not phased, which isn't satisfying. Mostly young people using the site.

Ancestry - Excellent if doing genealogy with "colonial American" ancestry (meaning not recent immigrants). Will get a lot of matches and can build your tree right there. Detailed ethnicity categories + genetic communities (though some are vague like African Americans getting the South) Cons: no chromosome browser, not good for certain ethnicities like Asians or recent immigrants, have to pay for membership to access trees and see shared names and locations.

FTDNA - inexpensive. Interesting ancestry composition results because they go deep. Get ancient results with info. Chromosome browser and related tools. For people wanting to spend the hundreds for serious genealogy the y and mtdna tests are beyond compare. Con of those other than price is if you don't have matches for your lines. Their haplogroup assignments with those tests are supposed to be most accurate and detailed, and you can join related family groups. If bought another test you can upload your results for free for more matches or pay $20 to get their ancestry results too. Cons - majority of users are Finnish and Scandinavian so complaint about lack of matches is common and gives impression you are from those communities because of their endogamy. Many people dislike or disagree with the ancestry results, consider them far left field.

Also, if depends on whether you are trying to find or connect with unknown distant relatives, or just find out what regions your ancestors lived in/came from.

The weak link in all of them, as far as finding relatives, is that the relatives have to be in their data base.
 
Posts: 4006 | Location: North Carolina | Registered: August 16, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by Tommydogg:
My wife got me a kit. I'm 99 percent Irish and Engrish. 1 percent African. I now identify as a Mandikan Warrior!


So how do you do in the sun? Big Grin


_________________________

https://www.teampython.com


 
Posts: 8318 | Location: 18 miles long, 6 Miles at Sea | Registered: January 22, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
An investment in knowledge
pays the best interest
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I have a deep educational and professional background in biochemistry & bioinformatics; all I can say is that consumer genomic services are primarily for entertainment purposes only. There are several criteria that determine the level of accuracy/coverage when it comes to genomic sequencing, way too many to go into here. Not only do sequencing methods highly vary & the accuracy one desires depends a great deal on time + cost, but the reference databases themselves (which all consumer genomic services utilize, such as GenBank) have annotation error rates somewhere between 20-40%. Specific sections of the genome and their level of expression can be and quite often are utilized to discriminate patient cohorts when it comes to medical treatment, the services of which should not be confused with 23andMe, Ancestry, etc. Caveat emptor.
 
Posts: 3362 | Location: Mid-Atlantic | Registered: December 27, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Don't Panic
Picture of joel9507
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Got a '23 and me' kit as a gift, gave it right back.

I tend to read fine print, and the data ownership/privacy was a non-starter. There's little more personal and individual than your DNA.

At least, with browsers you can delete cookies.....
 
Posts: 15001 | Location: North Carolina | Registered: October 15, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Here's a link to a slightly less enthusiastic review of 23 and Me from a few years back.
 
Posts: 7301 | Registered: January 10, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
An investment in knowledge
pays the best interest
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
Here's a link to a slightly less enthusiastic review of 23 and Me from a few years back.


The article is horribly written. I can summarize it for everyone, particularly as I know the history of the firm & its early investors:
23andMe initially marketed their consumer genomic kits using non-medical claims and attempted to generate interest by building a social network based on the genomic similarities of its customers ... which didn't pan out too well. The company took a right turn and like so many IT entrepreneurs with hubris thought they could simply make approximate medical claims (w/o study data and regulatory clearances), pushing the limit until the FDA said enough is enough. 23andMe was forced to reconcile its marketing/regulatory affairs/operations, hiring additional life sciences personnel (more than a decade after its founding) and decided to take another business angle, one with a consumer basis: ancestral ideology. The test is performed at cost (little or no margin) and a data monetization strategy is primarily employed, allowing life science firms to mine blinded information (i.e. no biographic information is connected with the data).

The author of the Scientific American article is either an idiot or like so many of the Press, trying to cause hysteria. 23andMe can't just hand-over anyone's genomic data or any medical information that provides an identifier (thus it's blinded) to a third party; doing so is a violation of HIPAA regulations and any company stupid enough to do so would quickly find itself in deep shit. Yet, the author makes no mention of this fact... instead hypes a possible outcome that really shouldn't be a concern. Should consumers determine that a HIPAA policy / certification is in place with these services? Absolutely, but one could use a pseudonym if one so desires.
See my earlier post concerning these genomic tests in the consumer market for my perspective on their true entertainment value.
 
Posts: 3362 | Location: Mid-Atlantic | Registered: December 27, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Thank you for the above information. I found it very educational.
 
Posts: 17175 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of FiveFiveSixFan
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quote:
Originally posted by Dakor:
quote:
Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
Here's a link to a slightly less enthusiastic review of 23 and Me from a few years back.


...

23andMe can't just hand-over anyone's genomic data or any medical information that provides an identifier (thus it's blinded) to a third party; doing so is a violation of HIPAA regulations and any company stupid enough to do so would quickly find itself in deep shit.
...


Are you saying that 23 and Me qualifies as a covered entity and thus falls under HIPAA regulations?
 
Posts: 7301 | Registered: January 10, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Master of one hand
pistol shooting
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I did ancestry. I was surprised at how British I am. My maternal Great Grandparents all 4 came from Germany in the 1870s. My Dad's paternal Grandparents came from Denmark about 1850-60. Dad's maternal Grandparents are strong on Colonial folk from England via Ireland as far back as 1600. I'm related to Lord North and Sir John Eckerly. Maybe even related to Tac. Who knows.
Numbers 49% Brit, 36% Scandanavian, 10% E Europe (towards Russia), 2% Irish, and a little tiny "other". A Norwegian one time said I look very "Danish"
 
Posts: 6295 | Location: Oregon | Registered: September 01, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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April 2016 article: Which DNA test is best for me. The answer is that it depends on the sort of questions that you would like answers to. http://dnaandfamilytreeresearc...-is-best-for-me.html

April 2017 article about the different companies, and tests: https://dna-explained.com/category/phasing/

Website/wiki of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, with tons of info: https://isogg.org/

. . . and so on.
 
Posts: 4006 | Location: North Carolina | Registered: August 16, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
An investment in knowledge
pays the best interest
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
quote:
Originally posted by Dakor:
quote:
Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
Here's a link to a slightly less enthusiastic review of 23 and Me from a few years back.


...

23andMe can't just hand-over anyone's genomic data or any medical information that provides an identifier (thus it's blinded) to a third party; doing so is a violation of HIPAA regulations and any company stupid enough to do so would quickly find itself in deep shit.
...


Are you saying that 23 and Me qualifies as a covered entity and thus falls under HIPAA regulations?


Great question! A covered entity may be one of 3 types, in this case the Health Care Clearinghouse comes into play:

Health Care Clearinghouse – A public or private entity, including a billing service, repricing company, community health management information system or Community health information system and “valueadded” networks and switches that either process or facilitate the processing of health information received from another entity in a nonstandard format or containing nonstandard data content into standard data elements or a standard transaction, or receive a standard transaction from another entity and process or facilitate the processing of health information into a nonstandard format or nonstandard data content for the receiving entity.

23andMe wants to move up the value chain and offer services beyond genealogy. Just recently the FDA gave approval for them to market the service for, if I recall correctly, genetic health risk (GHR) measures, the reports of which provide consumers well documented guidance on what the results mean. That and the capability of sharing the information with their healthcare providers means they should be considered a (health care clearinghouse) covered entity. What disturbs me about the Scientific American article is the author never asked leadership at 23andMe what their strategic intentions were. If he did, they would have stated that their data policy prevents identifiers from being shared by them and, in all likelihood, the company will be seeking HIPAA certification when it becomes necessary. Obviously I'm all for providing warnings to the public about consumer genetic testing, but the author was being irresponsible by painting one of the leading companies in the space as the boogeyman that will be sharing your genetic data and ID with anyone it so desires.
 
Posts: 3362 | Location: Mid-Atlantic | Registered: December 27, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of FiveFiveSixFan
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Dakor:
quote:
Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
quote:
Originally posted by Dakor:
quote:
Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:
Here's a link to a slightly less enthusiastic review of 23 and Me from a few years back.


...

23andMe can't just hand-over anyone's genomic data or any medical information that provides an identifier (thus it's blinded) to a third party; doing so is a violation of HIPAA regulations and any company stupid enough to do so would quickly find itself in deep shit.
...


Are you saying that 23 and Me qualifies as a covered entity and thus falls under HIPAA regulations?


Great question! A covered entity may be one of 3 types, in this case the Health Care Clearinghouse comes into play:

Health Care Clearinghouse – A public or private entity, including a billing service, repricing company, community health management information system or Community health information system and “valueadded” networks and switches that either process or facilitate the processing of health information received from another entity in a nonstandard format or containing nonstandard data content into standard data elements or a standard transaction, or receive a standard transaction from another entity and process or facilitate the processing of health information into a nonstandard format or nonstandard data content for the receiving entity.

23andMe wants to move up the value chain and offer services beyond genealogy. Just recently the FDA gave approval for them to market the service for, if I recall correctly, genetic health risk (GHR) measures, the reports of which provide consumers well documented guidance on what the results mean. That and the capability of sharing the information with their healthcare providers means they should be considered a (health care clearinghouse) covered entity. What disturbs me about the Scientific American article is the author never asked leadership at 23andMe what their strategic intentions were. If he did, they would have stated that their data policy prevents identifiers from being shared by them and, in all likelihood, the company will be seeking HIPAA certification when it becomes necessary. Obviously I'm all for providing warnings to the public about consumer genetic testing, but the author was being irresponsible by painting one of the leading companies in the space as the boogeyman that will be sharing your genetic data and ID with anyone it so desires.




That's great that 23 and Me wants to move up the value chain and offer services beyond genealogy but I don't see where that has anything to do with either the article linked (which was written 4 years ago) or with HIPAA since they certainly were not bound by HIPAA 4 years ago. To the the best of my knowledge, they still aren't today. That being the case, the company would not be at risk for any consequences which would normally arise from any behavior that would constitute a HIPAA violation for a covered entity until such time as they actually become one. Hence, the companies strategic intentions, especially from 4 years ago, would seem moot.

What would seem more relevant is what is actually contained in their rather voluminous Privacy Policy , and, perhaps equally important and relevant, what is not there. Specifically, any reference to HIPAA since the privacy policies of covered entities typically reference HIPAA quite repetitively.

As mentioned in joel9507's post, the fine print of the Privacy Policy contains enough worrisome clauses to give pause to anyone who values and wishes to protect their most personal information.
 
Posts: 7301 | Registered: January 10, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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