Genetic information?

[Jade Sinapu]

 Once genetic information is sequenced and put into a database for matching ancestry, it's  doubtful it can be erased.  What do you think?

Would you send DNA to a service such as those who promise to genetically sequence it and match it to tell you who you are related to?
Do you care if the information is out there?
Would you have anything to hide?
Would you be concerned about a company secretly selling data to insurance and law enforcement?
Would you be afraid they will find out you are not 100 % human and seek you out for horrible experiments?

I vote a strong no!  No one needs my genetic info, it's unremarkable.

Besides I have a family tree record on paper dating back to maybe 1579 (Who cares)
To one "James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, Munster Ireland"

(Hopefully he wasn't a bad guy)

[Kay Alett]

I wouldn't but not because I'm worried about anyone having my information or anything, I just don't care about ancestry and culture.
A lot of people say you can't know who you are until you know where you come from but I rebuke that statement.
Even if some of my behaviors are the same as behaviors some of my ancestors had I don't believe learning their histories will tell me anything about why I feel or think the way I do.

I am me. I am a sum of my experiences and while yes, some things are genetic I don't believe learning the histories of ancestors will tell me anything about myself I don't already know.

My parents and grandparents tried to teach me about my great grandparents and other people farther back going all the way to the civil war but the way I look at it, I don't know those people, I never will know those people because they're all dead. I don't possess whatever it is some people have that lets them unconditionally love a person based on pure genetic relation the instant it's revealed to them.

Maybe it's because of some things my mother did to me when I was little that caused a lot of trauma and made it impossible for me to ever trust her. Maybe it's because my half-brother bullied me to the point that I had no love for him whatsoever. I can only like and love people based on how they treat me and if they're a person who is already dead then to me that's just "someone who existed".

So yeah, don't know my ancestry and culture, don't care enough to go looking into it.

[Jade Sinapu]

I totally get what you say Kay.

My mother has always had an obsession regarding genealogy.  It's her hobby and I will let her have that, but to me genealogy is only useful to a point.  It might be good to predict certain cancers, if you want advanced warning that is.

I have met "strangers" who are more like "family" that those I am related to.  It's nice to divorce your families social , emotional, historical baggage.  Sometimes it's the best thing to just forget.

You are you. You are your own person.
You can be more than those before you, and you need not be defined by those who came before you.

[Old Rabbit]

People shouldn't try to  hurt or falsify a database.
Seems like a privacy issue asking people to give out
ancestry info.

But I wouldn't give them information to begin with.

[Varg the wanderer]

Lots of Scottish, lots of German, some Mongolian, and one poor sap from the Mayflower. No DNA used, none needed. And with today's privacy problems, none shall be given willingly.

[Jade Sinapu]

Ha ha, yeah I wouldn't want to be on the Mayflower either.  How long did it take to get here? And no BurgerKing? How ever did they survive? I say, I would have died of grease withdraw.

I have a bit of German, Irish, English, Scottish, Ukrainian?, and rumored to have some Native American in there somewhere. Essentially an average Joe Heinz 57 mutt.  no DNA test required either. 

Privacy issues do seem to be on the rise.   Heck some stores track your movement to predict what will sell even if you don't buy anything.  They do it with ultrasonic sounds from smartphones and embedded devices in the store, as well as tracking Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signatures.  Just to get some more money.
If some people are willing to do that, why not leak out DNA data. Just my opinion.
But if someone were to want a DNA test, not like I will stop them.

[cause the rat]

I know my ancestry for the last four generations. Both sets of great grand parents came over from Italy. So my great grand parents were Italian. My grand parents were Italian and my parents are Italian. But it would be cool to know just how many European countries I'm a mix of.

[Jade Sinapu]

Pretty cool Cause!
Thanks for sharing!

I am starting to wonder just who the DNA test companies are targeting, if seems many furs here know their ancestry.

Gee, didn't someone post a question about fursona heritage a while back? (Off topic).

[Michen_S]

I don't need a DNA test because I'm sure that, surprise surprise, the last few generations all come from the Netherlands. I don't want to work along with the ancestry testing because I don't want my DNA stored for such long periods of time. Besides, a Dutch consument program recently revealed those kinds of tests to be fairly inaccurate as well, or at least most of the tests available online for people in the Netherlands.

[Varg the wanderer]

I have a funny feeling those tests are really only popular in the US and Canada, where there is a lot of mixing compared to the rest of the world.

[Jade Sinapu]

The so called melting pot.
I think for some genetics is also a hobby.  Meh.
All I know it's I am 90%human.

[cause the rat]

I have a funny feeling those tests are really only popular in the US and Canada, where there is a lot of mixing compared to the rest of the world.

We are the mutts of the world!

[Kay Alett]

The so called melting pot.
I think for some genetics is also a hobby.  Meh.
All I know it's I am 90%human.

90% huh? How would you feel if I told you that roundabouts half of your genes, and mine, and all of our, genes are the same as that of a fruit fly?

[Jade Sinapu]

Well that would help to explain my attention span, intelligence and other issues!

Yeah I knew all living things shared X% DNA with other things, didn't know what that percent was.  Makes me wonder about stuff that has happened to me, some things that some may call instincts...

Please feel free to elaborate on fruitfly DNA and GSD DNA

[Jade Sinapu]

Okay, so with the recent news about how only 2-3% of a population need be sampled before a "good-enough" database can be created for the purposes of matching people to others based upon things like process of elimination, statistics, and such, how do you feel now?

The online gene pool is large enough now that almost anyone can be pinpointed by statistics and such now.  So, anyone want to change their vote?

[Michen_S]

Surprise surprise, what I posted here hasn't changed. Like, not even a little bit.