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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2002-12 > 1039604752


From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] Steve Olson Article
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 12:05:52 +0100 (CET)
References: <36.337f0320.2b27e5ea@cs.com>
In-Reply-To: <36.337f0320.2b27e5ea@cs.com>


Several things in the article alarmed me to the fact that it was
propagandistic. For example, the claim that England's having been settled
by Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans, would point to its great
genetic diversity is ridiculous, since all those peoples mentioned (except
the Celts) were very closely related Germanic tribes, and the Celts in
turn are closely related to the Germanic peoples. Another bit of
propaganda was the warning that since we all come out of Africa - which is
certainly far from proven in my mind - there would be no point to tracing
our paternal or maternal lineages anyway, as they would lead back to to
the same few people for everyone, and that genetic testing can thereby
have only a negative impact - (which seems to contradict his own false
line of reasoning). The authour claims too that in the furthest
generations we all have billions of billions of ancestors - far too many
to warrant having a patrilineal test done, and much too genetically
diverse to find out anything useful from such a test. But he also states
that the number of our our ancestors is greatly reduced by marriage of
relatives in the same geographical area (which is true, and which in fact
substantiates the value of patrilineal or matrilineal testing as the
continents are, as it were, clusters of genetic likeness).

It seems to me that the authour is trying to conjure up the spectre of
racism to scare people away from genetic testing. He makes a false
presumption - that admitting to or accentuating our diversity and seeking
out gruops of people with whom we have a special affinity, is equal to
racism.

I have a definite , concrete personal reason for tracing back my paternal
lineage, as I have in other postings explained. The authour of the article
in question seems to be completely (deliberately?)ignorant of the
beneficial uses of Y-chromosome testing.

Bert de Friest Macnamara
> wrote: "What do you see as his basic points? "
>
> I took the basic point of the article as discouraging people from wasting
> their money and ego on tests that have little meaning, since patrilineal
> and
> matrilineal lines are only a small part of a person's makeup. However, he
> did
> throw in a bit of unneeded political correctness by professing concern
> over
> the societal implications of the tests. He included too much detail and
> may
> have lost his readers in some parts of the article, however.
>
> "That's no excuse for the Washington Post to publish a PhD in the field
> spreading misinformation."
>
> You have a much higher assessment of this newspaper than I do. I view the
> Post as full of all sorts of propaganda. The article adds a scientific
> patina
> to their political correctness, so it would get a pass at the Post.
>
>
> ==============================
> To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records,
> go to:
> http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237
>
>

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