It's the last day of April! Which means it's the last day of my tweets about the last 20 years of home DNA testing. Because it has been exactly twenty years since this industry started. And what has transpired has been fairly remarkable. #DNAtesting20 1/11
By 2020, we've seen the databases go from about 1 million, collectively, in 2013, to at least 30 million. And yes, there's been a slow down in spit kit sales. But with the pivot to health-oriented DNA testing products from these companies, those numbers are going to grow. 2/11
We've seen all sorts of things: a move towards health products from @Ancestry and @MyHeritage, drug development and major pharma deals from @23andMe. The rise of forensic genealogy and the closing of cold cases from as far back as the mid-century (and earlier). 3/11
The passage of fertility fraud laws in several states -- after the revelation of doctors who subbed in their own sperm for fertility treatments without telling their patients. 4/11
And most profound and moving to me - more than anything that's happened on the healthcare front or the legal front -- are the changes commercial DNA testing has wrought on the private lives of millions of Americans. 5/11
Countless NPEs ("not parent expected") discovered. Adoptees able to find birth parents. #Donorconceived people forging relationships with sometimes dozens (sometimes more than 100) half-siblings, forming sprawling networks all across the country. 6/11
Families whose racial and ethnic identities were erased by racism, discrimination and assimilation uncovered and reclaimed. 7/11
#DNAtesting has prompted a grand historical reckoning with the past, and made the events of 30, 50, 80 years ago seem not just present, but urgent. It is allowing countless people to rewrite their own origin stories, and forcing the most painful family conversations. 8/11
And all of this has happened quite without anyone expecting it. DNA testing was supposed to be a niche product for family historians into #genealogy. Then it was a way for people to get health-related insights. Then it was... 9/11
...the holiday gift for the person in your life who already has everything. Few people anticipated that it could usher in the age of genetic reckoning, making massive alterations to the narratives of millions of Americans' private lives. But it has. 10/11
DNA testing has changed us irrevocably. Our understanding of those changes, and how to talk about them, and support people going through them, will be the conversation of coming years and decades. [end]
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