GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives
Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2006-04 > 1145859463
From: (John Chandler)
Subject: Re: [DNA] Genealogy as we knew it
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 02:17:43 -0400 (EDT)
References: <380-22006462235015649@earthlink.net>
In-Reply-To: <380-22006462235015649@earthlink.net> (ericbear01@earthlink.net)
Eric wrote:
> It's difficult enough to recruit new members for surname studies
> because they are already nervous about privacy matters. How can we
> make it perfectly clear that the DNA useful to genetic genealogy has
> nothing to do with the DNA used for paternity, forensics or
> medicine? Or can we?
In fact, there are companies that offer paternity tests based on
Y-STR testing, believe it or not. Obviously, these can be invoked
only for male children, and there are situations where they would
not be useful even for males, but such things are already out there.
What is particularly distressing is the situation that brought the
above fact to my attention. A woman wrote to me saying that her
brother had taken a paternity test, but wouldn't participate in
the surname project and didn't have any interest in genealogy anyhow.
I explained that paternity tests were probably not of any use to us
in the surname project, but she pointed me to the web site of the
company that had done the test, and there it was. Unfortunately,
the lab report was just a yes/no, and even after the brother wrote
to the lab asking what markers had been used and what the lengths
had been, the best they would do was a list of the PCR product
lengths in bases (!) and a refusal to reveal the primer sequences
(top secret!!). So close, and yet so far.
John Chandler
This thread:
| Re: [DNA] Genealogy as we knew it by (John Chandler) |