DNA Ancestry Testing on TV

Posted by Pete Shanks March 10, 2010
Biopolitical Times

Ancestry research is one of the flavors of the season on TV, and DNA testing is featured in one of the offerings. "Faces of America," with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., just finished its run on PBS, while "Who Do You Think You Are?" has just started on NBC. The programs share a focus on selected celebrities, though "Who Do You Think" is "glitzier and less high-brow" -- the New York Post clearly considers that a compliment.

Both include a substantial amount of good old-fashioned document-based research, with the inevitable "wow" factor. (The 24th great-grandfather of Elizabeth Alexander, the chair of African-American Studies at Yale, was King John of England!) But where the NBC program seems to stick with that process, Gates took a higher-tech route; his program partnered with -- you guessed it -- 23andMe.

"Faces" promoted itself with a sweepstakes for "the 23andMe Complete Edition, retail value $499." The company's Health Edition is currently $429 and includes 21 carrier-status reports, 12 on disease-risk, 8 on drug-response, 10 on traits such as HIV resistance and muscle performance. The Ancestry Edition includes mtDNA and Y-Chromosome tests, plus various bells and whistles, and retails for $399. The Complete Edition includes both, but wait, there's more -- you also receive the ability to download your raw data, for nearly 600,000 DNA positions.

Despite this promotional emphasis, the first three "Faces" episodes (of four) concentrated on conventional research, and rather movingly portrayed aspects of the immigrant experience. Only in the fourth did DNA analysis become a topic. Gates himself and his 96-year-old father had their whole genomes sequenced -- the first African-Americans, the first father and son, and the oldest individual so far. Gates recruited Eric Lander to explain about the "heirloom" that is your genome, the "patchwork quilt" that is passed down through the generations.

"So you're saying, this is the ultimate form of genealogical analysis," said Gates, "the ultimate family tree."

"Exactly," Lander replied. "This is the family tree."

That, of course, is both true and somewhat misleading, since it ignores all social and cultural issues -- not least, who we count as our family. Later in the program, George Church and colleagues introduced Gates to his genome, which "predicted" various things he already knew, such as his lactose intolerance, and the likelihood that he would not go bald. Gates was dubious about this, and lowered his head to show his bald spot, but the scientists each insisted, "I see hair."

The others on the show, however, had to settle for the much less informative analysis of mtDNA and Y-chromosomes done by 23andMe. (For more about the limitations of this approach, see Chapter 2 of Playing the Gene Card? by my colleague Osagie Obasogie.) The results were mostly less than stunning:

The show mentioned but rather skated over the fact that the test does not distinguish between Asian and Native American ancestry. Gates used this to claim some relationship with Ma, since Gates has some genes that are assigned to the Asian/Native American pool. Generally, however, they used the commonsense simplification -- Ma is Asian, while Eva Longoria has some Native American genes, though to her surprise she actually had more European ones.

The show then played some games of who-is-related-to-whom, genetically. Gates himself is a distant cousin of Malcolm Gladwell (hundreds of years ago, on the white side). Yo-Yo Ma bears some relationship to Eva Longoria ("He's Mexican?" she retorted). Meryl Streep is related to Mike Nichols. And so on.

This sort of thing is a purely frivolous use of DNA technology, but it would be a little harsh to deny Gates (or the rest of us) that small pleasure. Still, the idea that we are defined by our DNA rather than by our personal experience and our cultural upbringing is potentially dangerous. To be fair, the main thrust of the series was that we are each individually connected to a broad and deep community over time, a much more subtle and inclusive message.

There was one dissenter in the program -- Louise Erdrich, who refused to take the DNA test. She is Ojibwa, and that identity is vital to her:

"I really feel that identity is a very complicated mixture, of what you grow up with, what you find out about yourself. I didn't want to add any confusion to it. It wouldn't do me any harm, but when I asked my extended family about this -- and I did go to everyone -- I was told, 'It's not yours to give, Louise.'"

"Interesting," commented Gates, and it is. He could, of course, have left that refusal out of the program, and it's to his credit that he did not. But it's worth a little more consideration. (The website has a somewhat longer version of the interview.) Erdrich has received some criticism for her decision, suggesting that she is so attached to her self-identification as a Native American that she is not willing to doubt it, much as racist whites have been known to hide any "taint" of blackness or "Jewish blood."

This misses her point completely, not least because Erdrich also embraces her German ancestry. What is vital is the concept that the genetic heritage she shares is exactly that: a shared heritage. As such, no individual has an untrammeled right to give it away, or expose its secrets. One may disagree with that assessment, just as one may choose to visit the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, despite the request (published at the entrance) of some Native Americans that you let their past lie undisturbed; but this is not a simple matter.

The idea of familial susceptibility to disease is acknowledged to be controversial: If I am at risk, should I tell my brother if he does not wish to know? How do we handle uncertainty in these predictions? The more general question raised by Erdrich's family is less often examined. Many minority groups around the world are extremely worried by the idea of "biopiracy" -- and the conventional western academic view that all knowledge is beneficial should not be allowed to ride roughshod over these concerns by default.

Finally, Elizabeth Alexander, the African-American poet and professor, came up with another of the most interesting comments in the series, when she discovered that she is, by DNA, 66% white:

"It just gets curiouser and curiouser. But of course if all of us were only known by our DNA, then we'd have a whole different American history."

Indeed we would. It might, however, be no less prejudiced than the one we already know. "Know Thyself" is the motto Church and company took from ancient Delphi and stamped on the box containing the DNA listing they presented to Gates. "Nothing in Excess" would a good companion from the same source.

Previously on Biopolitical Times: