My DD, 22, was born in another country and adopted by me as a baby. She recently asked me if I would get her one of these ancestry.com type kits. I’m not sure she herself even knows exactly what she’s looking to find, but I’m willing to give it a try. Does anyone know anything about any of these places that advertise so much? I do know that they keep your data and some of them give it to law enforcement. Scary.
Thanks in advance!!
If you wait until July for Amazon Prime Day you may be able to buy the 23andMe kit for $99 instead of $199.
If she’s interested in finding possible blood relatives, how many dna matches she will find will depend on how popular, or not, the particular brand is in her birth country. My daughter, born in China, has done 23 and me, and has only matched with other China/U.S. adoptees as very distant relatives.
If your daughter tests with one company, she may be able to upload her raw dna data to others. For example, I tested myself with Ancestry, and was able to upload to FamilyTreeDNA. My ancestry is Finnish/Swedish, and I get many more Finnish matches on FamilyTreeDNA because it’s more popular in Finland, but more U.S. and Swedish matches on Ancestry.com. (FamilyTreeDNA has a sale on now.)
Because we know nothing about our daughter’s family medical history, and 23 and me focuses more on gene-related diseases, she chose to test with them.
I have read on the internet that it is possible to upload the dna data to a Chinese company - WeGene - for finding family tree matches, but don’t know how practical it is for non-Chinese speakers to attempt.
A Google search with your daughter’s country of origin and DNA may point you in the right direction for the best test. Also adoptee groups from that country.
Thanks so much. I hadn’t thought about the possibility of finding bio sibs or relations. I should kind of warn her about that. She was born in Russia, btw.
Genealogy is my hobby.
There are differences among companies. While your country of origin is relevant, which testing company you should use also depends upon what you want and how much you are willing to pay. I suggest this chart to get a good overview, but I’d suggest doing some background reading on DNA to make it more comprehensible. https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_testing_comparison_chart
Generally speaking…most testing companies won’t give your info out to a criminal investigation without a subpoena. One notable exception is GedMatch, which isn’t a testing company at all. It’s a site where you can VOLUNTARILY upload your data to a site administered by volunteer genealogists and see matches. Many of those matches took a DNA test with other companies. You can usually exchange emails directly with others who have uploaded their DNA. To illustrate, I tested with My Heritage. I also uploaded my data to FTDNA, in part because it is more popular in Ireland and genetically I’m mostly Irish. I’m also on GedMatch. There I can see DNA matches with people who took the Ancestry test or the 23 and me test, even though those companies won’t allow me to upload my data; I have to take their tests.
To this point, most of the exciting criminal cases have involved GedMatch. Law Enforcement companies have uploaded DNA from crimes directly to GedMatch. They don’t need a subpoena to do this. They find matches and then do traditional genealogical research to narrow the number of suspects. That is what the rest of us do to find family members. Only when they have found a very likely suspect do they go looking for that suspect and try to get some DNA to draw a conclusive result.
As someone into genealogy, I really like GedMatch. It’s free. (Additional tools cost extra.) I can see my matches with people who tested with different companies. It allows me to combine a GedCom (simplified Family tree) search with a DNA search. As I said before, I’m Irish and lots of the surnames in my tree are exceedingly common. GedMatch allows me to search for a surname–e.g., Murphy (which is about the only Irish name NOT in my family tree) and limit my search to people who have listed that surname AND match my DNA.
FTDNA has recently announced that it will co-operate with federal investigations if the interest seems compelling. I see this as responsible. YMMV.
Sometimes, the results can be upsetting. People do discover that they and a sibling don’t have the same parent. Or that their parent had a child before marriage and gave it up for adoption.
I don’t like the ads that suggest that every reunion between an adopted child and birth parent ended in rainbows and Hallelujahs. Not all of them do.
I like to watch the genealogical TV shows. Most of the time, the search goes as planned. But sometimes… George RR Martin’s show was one of the most poignant. He had this whole mental image of his family and DNA changed it completely. He believed that his grandmother was a saint. He’d grown up in the same household with her and he loved her very much. He thought of her as a very devout pious woman. His story was that her awful husband abandoned her and started a whole new family. After he left, his grandfather paid no attention to his son and didn’t support him financially. Martin despised his grandfather, whom he rarely saw.
DNA proved…it was his grandmother who had the affair. His grandfather had only left her after he realized his wife had been unfaithful. He had kept his mouth shut as to why he had left. His lack of interest in his son–Martin’s father–was because he knew he wasn’t his son.
Martin looked like he’d been hit with a mack truck.
So, yes, DNA results can be upsetting. They can also be very helpful if you’re “into” researching family history.
My adopted (China) daughter just did a test. Her boyfriend gave it to her as a gift. I don’t know what she was expecting to find, but found she was 90% Han Chinese, 8-9% Korean, and the rest as a default (seems to be American Indian, but we know it is not). A friend has a daughter from the same orphanage, and her daughter is also 90% Han, 8-9% Korean and Mongolian, and the 1% American Indian. They did not come up as matches for each other. No relatives came up in daughter’s report.
There have been a few reported cases of finding siblings, or more likely half siblings. I don’t know if my daughter would care. She had a sister (a hazel eyed, skinny blonde sister) and that’s enough for her.
I know a lot of adoptees who did birth family searches when they were young adults (long before the DNA tests). A few were bad, a few were okay, but definitely not the happy rainbows like on the commercials.
I did a test because my husband loves genealogy and had done one and encouraged me to do so to learn more about my ethnic background. After two years, finally gave in and took a test. Opened up a huge can of worms but I don’t regret it. I won’t go into it here but you’ve gotten good advice and information from @Jonri.
Thanks to everyone. I don’t think my daughter really has it thought totally through what she is looking for. I don’t know if she is looking for her bio family or what. It’s doubtful she will accomplish much but at least I know more or less what’s it’s all about now. It may be some sort of vague feeling about her history, and maybe will lead to something more specific. I’m not going to stand in her way.
I have an adopted D19. About a year ago she wanted to do testing so she did both AncestryDNA and 23andme. Both provide their estimated ethnicity breakdown. We adopted her through a private domestic adoption so she was not an international adoption. Her ethnicity is a mix of mostly northern European and Hispanic. In her case, Ancestry was much more useful in terms of researching her biological family tree. We know the identity of her birthmother so it was her birthfather that was the mystery. Even though I have no prior background doing genealogical research, over a period of about 4 months I figured out the identity of her probable birthfather even though he’s not on Ancestry. I did it by mapping out the connections of various 2nd-3rd degree “cousins” on Ancestry. Through a combination of looking at some public family trees on Ancestry and researching old obituaries and digital sources like high school yearbooks, I eventually figured it out. We haven’t contacted him yet. But having gone through this I can see how all sorts of secrets come out.
I heard on the radio, all you need is about DNA data from 20% of population, one can map just about everyone.
I understand the interest in finding relatives and the good and bad results that can follow. However, at a broader level I am not a fan giving any company DNA b/c I don’t trust them not to sell information to other companies – esp. health or life insurers for risk assessment. We may all have a risk profile already that is DNA-based using information from our relatives and mapping it back to us.
I’m not given to conspiracy thinking, but I do think DNA registries are fundamentally about keeping and selling our data. We are literally the product. No thanks!
A friend’s brother is some kind of medical researcher. He said that soon everyone will have a profile done to determine which medicines are best for you, which your metabolism processes the best. Your doctor will know to prescribe antibiotic A over antibiotic B based on your profile.
It didn’t happen in 1984, but it’s coming.
An ancestry kit solved a 26 year old murder case in my area. Turns out the murderer was a well known wedding DJ. I’m eternally grateful to the relative who uploaded her results to Gedmatch.
@twoinanddone, the medical information in your scenario would be protected under HIPAA laws while the concerns of @AlmostThere2018 would not.
@mominva – I was just about the post the same thing re: HIPAA and personalized medicine.
My husband is a consumer protection attorney and he does not trust DNA companies’ privacy statements/agreements.
This was a brief report on ABC Evening News last night.
cont’d:
Husband’s family is 100% French Canadian. His first ancestry.com results had a LOT of Irish, some Scandinavian, Iberian Peninsula. He was so surprised. A couple of weeks ago, he got notice from them…oops, first results were wrong, you’re 99% French.
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Thanks everyone, this has been very helpful, if we ever do it. Now DD says she’d rather have something else for her birthday, and I told her a DNA kit wouldn’t be a birthday present, but something I would feel is her right to have done if she wants, whenever.
I don’t know how much your DD will find given her Russian roots, but IMHO I agree with an earlier poster who said ancestry.com has better tools for researching family trees. 23andme doesn’t even have the ability to create trees online.
Getting names of cousins is only a start; if you don’t recognize them then you’ll next need to try and figure out how they might be related to you. If you’re lucky some of them will already be in trees that have been put online on ancestry.com (although as a caveat some people create carefully researched trees and some are junk). For a separate charge than the dna test you can subscribe to the ancestry.com research materials where you can look up records they have indexed. Some records are free to use for research but many need the pay access. And then you might want to subscribe to newspapers.com thru ancestry; its one of the most helpful tools I’ve found because you can find wedding announcements (and therefore get full names) or obituaries that may name all the children and grandchildren.
My 17 and 18 year old children adopted from Eastern Europe did Ancestry last year and they have a few assorted matches but very distant. Obviously birth relatives from their countries probably don’t have access to these services. I also did it as I don’t have contact with my birth father and first name on my list was his surname. My list is 100 times longer than my kids unfortunately, but I guess my “unknown half” of European Jewish folk are particular interested in genetics and genealogy…for reasons we all know.