You really would be completely off your chump to use this ‘service.’
Allow me to introduce you to AncestryDNA. Here’s their website
dna.ancestry.co.uk
Do with that web address as you wish, but on your own head be it. I’m not touching it with a ten foot pole.
Here’s the deal. It costs only £99 for this mob to send you a kit with easy to follow instructions. Generously, delivery is free. You easily follow the instructions, and end up sending a saliva sample. Your DNA is analysed at more than 700,000 genetic markers, and in about 8 weeks you get the results.
This ‘one simple test’ will ‘uncover where your ancestors came from,’ ‘discover distant relatives,’ and ‘find new details about your unique family history.’
You can do some of the groundwork without the expense. If you even think of doing this, you clearly come from a long line of complete blithering idiots. You shouldn’t be allowed out unescorted.
Firstly, who on earth wants to send a DNA sample to a bunch of complete strangers? Why would you do that? Look at all the righteous (and quite correct) fuss when it was recently revealed the Old Bill still had many thousand DNA samples they’d retained, illegally, when the samplee was acquitted. Why anybody would volunteer to send DNA to an outfit of dubious trustworthiness defeats me.
Then the thorny problem of them actually testing the sample. You don’t really know, do you? They could trouser your hard-earned shekels, sit about for a few weeks, then just make it up. They could be as reliable as a psychic channelling an Egyptian pharaoh.
Let’s give then the benefit of the doubt, and assume they do the analysis of the 700,000 ‘genetic markers,’ though the terminology sounds a bit iffy to me. According to the graphic on the website, you find out that you’re 28% Scandinavian, 10% Italo-Greek, 10% Other, and 52% Great Britain. How does that help you? In the UK everybody is a mongrel, so the idea of anybody being predominantly from GB is suspicious.
The claim that you’ll find new relatives is a bit misleading too. You’ll only find those relatives who are as dumb as you are for using the service. But again, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Suppose you find out you’re related to Pigshagger or Gorge? Farrago? Bojo? Odious?
You could die of shame.
franhunne4u said:
Maybe they have the suspicious fathers in mind – but do not dare to offer their services there, as here in Germany it’s forbidden to secretly test DNA of your child …
Kate Wally said:
I may yet be one of those monumentally stupid people. I’d love to know where my DNA tracks. Find my other stupid relatives – which is genetically plausible. It’d be great.
nobodysreadingme said:
If you want to send your DNA to a bunch of people you don’t know and have no control over, whom you can’t trust to tell the truth or even get the assay right, and you’re willing to cough 99 quid then please feel free. I’m going nowhere near them, but I suspect the coppers may go knocking. 🙂
Kate Wally said:
I have more faith in humankind than I realised 🙂
Notes To Ponder said:
In 1970 my grandfather set out to research the family tree on my father’s side. A labour of love in a time without computers, Over 5 years, countless trips to England, hours of thumbing through Parish records and land registry documents – each of us received a booklet titled “COE – of Rotherfield in Sussex and of Shere in Surrey”. An amazing document, pages of meticulous reference, detail and reason, dating back to 1466 when John Coe wed Sara and produced 3 children.The centre page folds out on both sides, revealing a near poster size diagram of our lineage. It’s fantastic! I’m not interested in knowing if John Coe of 1466 had a speck of Bulgarian or German DNA – what possible difference does it make?
nobodysreadingme said:
Exactly. My surname is Viking, so I assume there’s somebody Nordic in my background, but I really don’t care, and I sure as hell am not sending a DNA sample off toe any bunch of potentially criminal charlatans