Maybe a naive question, but Is there a service like 23 and me but that doesn’t collect/keep my genetic information ? @nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
No. Every DNA collecting agent in the U.S. easily shares it’s data base.
Submitted 11 months ago by alvaro@social.graves.cl to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 11 months ago
otter@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I’ve been wondering this myself. I don’t really agree with the other comments because we do genetic tests on the medical side and that data is kept private. I don’t see why a company couldn’t offer similar stuff, paid privately, for a more comprehensive suite of tests.
On the ancestry side, it could pick out known biomarkers to trace back from publicly accessible data. The limits would be if you want to track down exact family trees, but I don’t think that was the intent
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 11 months ago
For the record, ancestry dna is basically a scam. Especially when they give you a percentage score.
Ask yourself what is French. Or English. How much interbreeding has happened across the spectrum? It can’t tell you who you are- there is no genetic encoding for culture.
otter@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
This makes sense, I don’t really know how they come up with those numbers. I feel like if we DID try to classify it (ex. If you have X gene, you are Y race), it’s much more likely to be used to cause harm. It wouldn’t make any sense to begin with, and it would enable arbitrary persecution
I’m more familiar with the inverse, where you can provide better care by screening for risks and generic markers that are more common for a particular demographic. That actually helps humanity and is worth studying more
Oaksey@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah I’ve always thought when they give those stats “how long ago?”. Where people’s ancestors lived could be quite different during different time periods, that I don’t think can be accurately represented by percentages.
Pratai@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Nope. And everyone knew what 23 and Me was doing and did it anyway.
otter@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Is there a reason one can’t exist? Like laws that prevent them from doing so?
Emperor@feddit.uk 11 months ago
I presume you are doing this for medical information rather than genealogy as they’d need to keep your information for it to be that useful to you.
If not, check out Family Tree DNA’s privacy policy as they seem pretty good with letting you set the level of sharing that you are comfortable with. They don’t share with third parties and you can adjust your sharing settings so law enforcement can use you for matching.
I’ve tested myself and a number of family members with them and am happy with the level of control they give but your mileage may differ.
CaptObvious@literature.cafe 11 months ago
Isn’t Family Tree the one that was first exposed for allowing LEOs access without a warrant?
Emperor@feddit.uk 11 months ago
I’m not sure of the timeline now but I seem to recall that this first came up through GEDmatch (which doesn’t do testing itself but allows people to upload results from different companies to compare them) and law enforcement had been creating data in compatible formats based on samples from cold cases. It hit the news because it helped identify the Golden State Killer. This got users nervous and they switched to you having to opt in allow that kind of matching.
FTDNA changed it ToS to allow law enforcement to use their database for rather vaguely defined crimes but that collided with laws (especially in the EU) and privacy groups, hence the large range of options available. In the EU you have to specifically opt in to allow those kind of matches,. elsewhere you have to opt out (which seems a bit confusing to me - it should be a blanket opt in).
jacktherippah@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Recently I listened to a Crime Junkie episode where they recommended you send your DNA in for genetic genealogy so that if a John Doe or Jane Doe turns up they can be identified and I was like lmfao no thanks why would I do that.
hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not to my knowledge. It’s absolutely pathetic and honestly kinda psychotic that you’re not allowed to understand your own genealogy and medical history without giving up pretty much everything about yourself. Forever.
Because unlike a compromised password, you can’t just hop on the computer and change your genes (yet??).
Boils down to a legislative failure.
zewu@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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givesomefucks@lemmy.world 11 months ago
When I was in like 5th grade we took a class trip to a police station.
Once we got there the cops said if we were “good” he’d let us do fingerprints at the end. I was excited till I found out we didn’t get to keep the cards, the cops did and they said it was in case we get kidnapped they can find us… When a minute ago it was just a reward for being good.
So I said I didn’t want to and the cop and teacher got super pushy and it turned into this whole big thing once parents found out every kid from my school for a couple years got tricked into giving cops their fingerprints.
I was just mad I didn’t get to keep the card, they should’ve just had me do two and kept one.
VulKendov@reddthat.com 11 months ago
Is there any benefit for those kinds of services. Other than just for fun, I don’t see any reason for it.
TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Having access to diseases that run in your family when you are adopted is a great benefit of it, and doing that at a private lab is way more expensive. And the one my sister did connected her with family members who were interested in being contacted. It’s not that there is a lack of benefit to the service, it’s that the services aren’t worth the privacy intrusion.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The problem is that to be able to tell you anything about relationships or heritage, they need a certain database, and the quality of that depends on the amount of entries to compare.
Without adding your data set to the collection, they would not gain anything to improve their database, which would de-value it in the long run.
A service that would analyse but not retain your data would have to pay other companies to provide input, and would therefore much more expensive.
raydogg@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Seems to me the hard part is getting the customers to pay the “full” price of getting the genetic sequencing done. 23andme’s prices to get tested is rather expensive (> $130 the last time I checked) but they are also getting paid for providing some of that data for various “studies”. So they are getting paid to collect and keep the genetic data, so the consumer price of testing ($130) is subsidized by the other revenue channel (i.e. selling access to the data).
I don’t know how much it costs to get your genes sequenced, but it’s probably more than $130 per sample.
I see it like ads… as much as everyone wants to complain about watching ads, the alternative is to pay the full price for the service you are consuming. Most of the services we consume are - after all - profit-making companies, and even the ones that aren’t have bills that need paying.
TheDoctorDonna@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If we could pick and choose what we share then it might not be so bad, but commodification of genetic information is weird.
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s absolutely abusive that in order to get your genetic background you have to be willing for the government to have your DNA.
kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s not even gouvernement, it’s other companies. One day some insurance company will decide to pull out your protections because, turns out, you have X% chances to get a cancer by your 40. Then all other insurance companies do the same. Then, one of them accepts you, but you gotta pay N% more for the same coverage
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s the fear. Government was just used as hyperbole to make a point.
sparky678348@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What are the potential downsides of the government having your DNA? I don’t think I can think of any for real
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 11 months ago
You’re absolutely right, I can’t think of a single point in history where there was mass persecution of any particular group by a government which might have been far more efficient of they had a handy database of every citizens DNA. Just never happens, not once in all of history. There’s definitely no shining example less than a century ago.
abbadon420@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What if the government in the nearby future decides it is illegal to watch porn? They trace your ip to your house, come with a search warrant, find you cumsock or vibrator covered in dna and you’re in the system. Boink! Off to horny jail with you!
kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Copy pasting my other comment
One day some insurance company will decide to pull out your protections because, turns out, you have X% chances to get a cancer by your 40. Then all other insurance companies do the same. Then, one of them accepts you, but you gotta pay N% more for the same coverage
XbSuper@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Both of the responses to your comment are batshit lol.
I don’t like the idea of the government having my dna, but does anyone have a genuine (non irrational) reason it would be bad?