Thursday, January 24, 2019
Twins Take DNA Tests
Charlsie and Carly Agro are identical twins. They mailed DNA samples to five different companies: AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, and Living DNA. The ancestry results were fairly detailed, but they varied from company to company. Even stranger, while their DNA is the same, their estimated ancestry didn't match each other! Tests done by Yale University determined that the twins' DNA samples were "shockingly similar," yet that's not what the commercial companies found. Read more about the Agro sisters' experiment at CBC. (via Digg)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Wow! Very interesting. That would explain why my sibs and I have different results (especially since we did not all use the same DNA testing companies).
I have heard that the ancestry results of commercial DNA tests are very unreliable.
If on the one hand we are now willing to let people determine for themselves what gender they identify as rather than the gender they were assigned at birth and even make physical modifications to correspond with this determination, why then are we at the same time so eager to use DNA testing (which, as it turns out, is about as dependable and accurate as the pseudoscience of phrenology) to find some racial/ethnic/geographic point of origin in which to pigeon-hole ourselves?
Bill, I've been downplaying the role of DNA for along time, since I built a family of people who do not share my DNA. Outside of any culture your ancestors bestowed on you (or diseases), why is it important? Then again, people have their own reasons for wanting to know their family's origin and history, and I have no call to tell them it shouldn't be important TO THEM.
Post a Comment