This past weekend, that good show 60 Minutes did a piece on companies offering genealogy reports from our DNA. I have to say that I was one of the first ones on board, spitting into my vial and mailing it away.
It was an easy decision for me because of my past.
Years ago, I took a job as the librarian for the Preble County District Library’s genealogy department. I loved that position and thoroughly enjoyed helping people explore their family histories. It was long before the likes of Ancestry.Com. In fact, the internet was barely just rolling out at that time, for public use. Everything discovered went by handwritten letters to counties, states, and agencies, all across the world.
When I started that job, it was a brand new department. The Library Director brought in a big cardboard box filled with more than 150 back-logged letters from people who’d written to Preble County, posing a query about their histories. It was my initial task to research and answer all those letters, not to mention the steady flow still coming in.
In the evenings, I would research my own family tree and loved to find my ancestors, every step of the way back into history. The process was long and laborious. These days, it is fast and furious. With that said, years later, I was ecstatic about the possibility of DNA providing additional clues about the source of me.
In the 60 Minutes piece, the argument against these companies was that it has become a “business” and that companies and foreign countries are vying for our DNA information. This was no surprise to me. Of course, they are.
The reporter laid out the groundwork stating that the world of biotech data is the new oil. They said that the DNA I provide for a genealogy test could be shared in a market worth trillions. Again. I said, of course, it is.
In our world now, we are humans in a world of data. Our lives have changed. Maybe our personal meanings of ourselves have remained the same in our own minds. But to the outer world, we are nothing but numbers. We are money. Every email we send, every ad we view, everything we buy is tabulated. It is dissected. It is scrutinized. And then, it is processed and exchanged.
The CBS team went on to say that our DNA is being sold to big tech companies that are trying to produce new drugs, new medicines, and new cures. And that is okay with me, if they can find a better way. It is up to our government to figure out an avenue to make those new drugs affordable to the masses.
But I digress. Before I even started, I went off-topic. I meant to begin with this. I got a new email report from 23 & Me this week, saying that I have more Neanderthal DNA than 11% of other customers.
I knew I was part Neanderthal. I just didn’t know how much. While some people may see this as a smudge on the pristine vile of that DNA, I liken it to a little badge of honor.
You seen Neanderthals went extinct, as a whole. For whatever reason, be it their violent surroundings, disease, gradual infertility — no one knows for sure. But whoever my Neanderthal was — my g-g-g-grandmother Norma Neanderthal — she figured out how to get busy with a homo erectus, and keep the line going.
I had a smart Neanderthal great grandmother.
Actually, a lot of them were. They may have looked a little different. But all in all, Neanderthals were probably a lot like us. They had slightly larger brains than modern humans, for one thing. And they knew how to make fire. That’s something.
Scientists have also discovered they used tools, and they could probably speak. They think Neanderthals created jewelry and art. They know this because the earliest European art — which are red pigment cave paintings southwest Europe — were likely made by Neanderthals 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe.
So, my folks could talk. And they could paint. Early on.
And. Back to all those companies vying for my DNA? They are going to get a little caveman mixed in, baby. Let’s hear it for the “Ugh!”
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“Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.”
— Mark Twain
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“When a society or a civilization perishes, one condition can always be found. They forgot where they came from.”
— Carl Sandburg
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“There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children – one is roots, and the other, wings.”
— Hodding S. Carter
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What we are made of.
