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
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
This makes sense, I don’t really know how they come up with those numbers. I feel like there is a realistic risk for harm if we DID try to classify it (ex. If you have X gene, you are Y race). It wouldn’t make any sense to begin with, and it would enable arbitrary persecution
I’m more familiar with the inverse, where doctors 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
They sample multiple people from a given region of the world and then look at possible genetic similarities between most individuals in that sample.
Then, they collect your genetic data and “match” to all the different signatures they’ve collected from different regions, and compute a similarity score.
In theory, if they had sufficient samples and the genes were very characteristic, this could work. In practice, any geneticist will be able to point out multiple flaws with this methodology.
There are indeed certain traits that only occur in specific populations… And while someone else totally unrelated could randomly have a similar mutation, it’d be unlikely. But those are rare, and absolutely not something that can be used to say “78% German”