I got my 23andme DNA report back this week. I shared it with my family (parents, siblings, wife, children) and participated in the “DNA Relatives” program that shows me likely relatives who have done 23andme. I found the information that came back to me from this sharing to be really interesting and potentially quite valuable.
I had lunch yesterday with a friend who I am not going to name to respect his privacy who spent many years trying to find his mother and finally tracked her down using public DNA records. It was an incredibly moving story and I am still thinking about it today. Stories like his make me feel that we ought to be more public with our DNA so that matches like his can be made. The DNA match he made was not to his mother. It was to his aunt, who then got him to his mother.
Obviously there are reasons not to be public with your DNA. The one most commonly mentioned is potential impacts on life insurance.
I started a Twitter poll to see how my Twitter followers feel about this issue. Feel free to participate in it and let’s talk about this issue today in the comments.
If/when you get your DNA sequenced, would you …..
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) April 22, 2016
