Family lore unraveled

After a substantial wait, I have finally received my test results from the Ancestry DNA folks. The noteworthy headline is that I’m not nearly as Irish as I have been led to believe. As it turns out, I am genetically more Scottish, English, and Western European than Irish, and I must now, painfully, retract any derogatory comments directed at Elizabeth Warren.

While I should probably be having a full-blown identity crisis, I was in many ways prepared for that outcome by a slow dribble of clues over the past few years. Research has borne out a few preconceived notions of my heritage, but I have also spotted a few red flags along the way.

The documented evidence of my roots has always run deeper in England than in Ireland, but we had King William’s census in 1086 to thank for that. Formal census-taking during the medieval period was uncommon, so anything in the 1086 record immediately places a thumb on the scale of written documentation. My DNA analysis now tells me that’s not just a question of record-keeping but confirms the claims I have read arguing that my last name “sounds Irish” but isn’t.

What’s more important is that I can now present my children with a more accurate view of our family history than what I received. Before the Internet eased our ability to access information, our understanding of our origins was only as good as the stories passed down through families. The complication is the human compulsion to fill the gaps in our knowledge with whatever might fit. Like most beliefs passed on through oral tradition, a tall tale beats “I don’t know” every time, and if the explanation of a mystery includes a siren, a fairy, or an angel, even better. The same creative embellishment seems to happen within family histories.

Hard-copy genealogy, like that done by the Mormon Church and our own Southwest Nebraska Genealogical Society, was and remains hard work, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) DNA analysis is no substitute. The technology is in its crawling stages and today’s discoveries will inevitably be improved upon, if not overtuned.

Digitized records and access via the Internet more easily open doors to serious researchers, but commercial sites like Ancestry.com and others go a step further to make access more user-friendly for the rest of us. For better or worse, the hard data offered by those products is augmented by crowd-sourced subjective inputs. In other words, consumer-focused genealogy sites are a step up from stories told around the campfire but are not untainted by family lore.

The thrill of entering the age of DTC genetic testing overshadows any discomfort caused by revelations in my DNA report. DNA innovations and RNA manipulation are among the more significant elements of the epoch that I’m happy to have witnessed. It doesn’t seem long ago that we spoke in speculative terms, confident that “someday” we might have this ability.

Yes, those technologies have a scary side, and my inner political animal looks forward to discussing the technology’s moral and ethical use. While we have distant future concerns about impacts on living organisms through deliberate misuse and unintended consequences, my sense is that the future isn’t so distant. How long has the debate over genetically modified crops been going on?

More immediately, the recording and sharing of my DNA results raises profound security concerns. We cheer when law enforcement uses DNA technology to catch a crook, but as I watch the use of artificial intelligence in “spoofing” audio and video content, I can’t imagine that my DNA results are only one hack away from the same sort of shenanigans.

All that considered, I am still tickled to have joined the 21st century, even if it was in an effort to learn more about the 18th. Having opened the door, I am eyeing another (more costly) service that promises detailed health risk reports. A premium-level “exome” sequencing report offered by 23andme.com claims to identify over 50,000 variants responsible for hereditary diseases and a genotyping product that looks at 250 health-related variants in carrier status. I don’t know that those reports are adjusted for a half-century of bad habits, but I’m curious.

If you ever take one of the DNA tests offered to consumers, be patient. The results take six weeks or more for delivery. Is it an exercise in self-indulgence? Perhaps, but shouldn’t we know our histories? As far as I’m concerned, it’s a sound investment in a world where a hundred bucks doesn’t buy much anymore.