Palestinian-American cartoonist and illustrator Marguerite Dabaie thought she understood her ancestry. But then she had a genetic test and things got messy. It’s not her DNA, it’s the technology.
AUDIO REMOVED: The podcast creator has removed the audio for this episode.
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epekilis recommended:Jun 22nd, 2019
People use popular genetic testing services like 23andMe for fun, but the results are probability based and heavily skewed by a database of comparators from the white population. Aside from messing with people’s heads about their parentage / ethnicity,the white skew in health databases leads to unr...Show More
dannyJun 22nd, 2019
oh! that's great timing, me and my cousins were just talking about genetic tests like 23andMe.
epekilisJun 22nd, 2019
@danny These tests are super popular but take the results with a huge grain of salt. The actual variance in the human genome is tiny, so without an adequately diverse database, it makes decisions based on the comparators it can find. The example in the podcast is a Palestinian American who got res...Show More
dannyJun 22nd, 2019
@epekilis ha! thats funny, she brought it up because she got the result she was a bit Irish! The British were around India for a while so who knows but she doesn't look very Irish. But thanks, will listen to it 😁