Using 23andMe to Reunite Families at the Border Comes With Serious Privacy Risks
By Tonya Riley,
Mother Jones [Cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
| 06. 22. 2018
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced an end to administration’s policy of separating families at the border. But the administration hasn’t figured out how to reunite the parents and children that have already been split apart. A day after Trump’s announcement, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) suggested a novel idea: recruit 23andMe, the DNA-testing company, to help separated families find missing relatives. The company itself quickly volunteered its services for the cause. But legal and genetic experts say that the solution might cause more harm than good.
Speier told Buzzfeed News on Thursday that she spoke with executives at 23andMe, which is headquartered in the congresswoman’s district, about providing testing assistance to reunite families at the border. By Thursday evening, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki said that the company “would welcome any opportunity to help” and was “waiting to see the best way to follow up and make it happen.” (23andMe donated $5,000 to Speier’s 2016 campaign.)
“I implore the President, Attorney General Sessions, and HHS Secretary Azar to accept this generous and altruistic offer, particularly in light of the fact that...
Related Articles
By Charles Schmidt, Undark | 09.25.2026
In 2010, scientists at the University of Tokyo and other institutions reported a startling achievement: They had successfully grown a pancreas made almost entirely of rat cells within the bodies of mice. The research was directed by Hiromitsu Nakauchi, a...
By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.29.2026
Cathy Tie slips on a white lab coat bearing her name and the logo of her startup: Origin Genomics. "Welcome!" she says as she leads an NPR reporter, photographer and videographer on an exclusive tour of Origin's labs located...
By Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, The New York Times | 09.08.2026
It is one of biology’s most ingenious rhythms: Every baby is born young. No matter how much wear and tear their parents’ DNA accumulated over their lifetimes, reproduction erases the molecular scars, handing a clean slate to the next generation...
What We Inherit by Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko; and Original Sin by Kathryn Paige Harden have a great deal in common, with substantial differences in style and emphasis. Both books attempt, in different ways, to show the reader just where current research into human genomics stands, where that might be going, and why the authors are interested. In short, the influence of genomic research on our societies is already large and seems likely to change them in ways...
