Ancestry and 23andMe: How DNA-testing is changing the world
1 in 20 Brits have used DNA testing, most commonly to trace their ancestry, and tens of millions of people have done the same thing worldwide.
Ancestry.com currently boasts it’s the number one selling consumer DNA kit. They began producing home test kits in the US in 2012, and claim to have over 25 million people in their DNA network.
Like their competitors, through DNA testing, they promise to try and trace your family history and unlock interesting discoveries about your heritage.
But for some, these sites are life changing.
As more and more people are conceived through fertility treatments and donors, these websites are giving people the power to trace their donors and family members.
Without any support or regulation.
We’ve spoken to people who are using these sites to piece together where they came from, to trace family they didn't know existed… and those who don’t want to be found.
These are the websites changing the world.
First up, we met Carly who’s 20. She’s one of over 70,000 people who have been born through donor-conception in the UK since 1991.
She told us that being “donor conceived... encompasses so much. It’s my identity, while at the same time not being who I am at all.”
“Doing Ancestry was a way for me to answer all of those questions of curiosity. These are little [questions] that have built up over the years. When someone would say to me, ‘where are you from’”.
Carly told us having done her at-home DNA tests with both Ancestry and 23&Me, she was able to make contact with a full-donor sibling, a sister. She told us she had “fantasised” about how it could happen, and how using the DNA websites was “never how she expected” to find any of her donor family.
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Carly Hewett
Carly Hewett
Like Carly, Jack was also donor-conceived. He knows he has 12 siblings born from the same donor as him, and he used genealogy sites to try to contact them.
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Despite signing up to a few, he’s yet to connect with any of his siblings. But, he is a step closer to finding his original donor.
He told us:
“I got my results back from 23&Me… you can only imagine the surprise on my face when… the app told me that they’re 90% sure {two profiles} were my biological grandparents. I immediately messaged them saying ‘oh my god’ ‘i think i might be your biological grandchild’”.
Jack would message the couple each year he tells us - as well as using Facebook to try and track them down. He then says, after three years “cool as you like” he received a response - saying they would ask their son whether he was a donor.
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Jack Hunt
Jack Hunt
The reason that so many people in the UK are using these sites, is because current laws are stopping them finding their donors.
Currently in the UK, anybody born from donations made before 1st April 2005 doesn’t have the right to know their donor’s identity.
But, anyone born from donations made on, or after this date, is able to find out this information when they reach the age of 18.
But… things are very different in Australia.
In 2016, Australia passed the first laws in the world to give donor-conceived people the right to know their donors, regardless of when they donated.
These laws have caused some controversy - where some people support the right of donor-conceived people to trace their families - others argue that it could deter people from wanting to donate if they can't remain anonymous.
We spoke to Ian, who lives in Melbourne, Victoria. He donated sperm in the 80s and admits he didn’t give it much thought… until he found out several children had been born from his donations.
Ian Smith
He was open to being contacted by his donor-off spring, but he’s got some concerns about the law change.
“When I was a donor, we were promised anonymity forever… but later they changed the law retrospectively, they dialed it right back to the mid-1980s. It was a pretty significant change.”
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But, laws around donor anonymity feel less relevant when genealogy sites are involved.
They allow their users to connect the dots for themselves.
This behaviour is worrying the HFEA, the UK’s fertility regulator.
It wants the government to waive anonymity laws further, proposing that the identity of the donor should be available from the moment a donor-child is born.
It’s concerning that alongside social media, these sites are allowing people to trace their donors in a way that isn’t regulated.
They also worry about users not being offered the level of support they need to navigate these complicated interactions.
While the legal rights of donor-conceived people [and donors] remain impossible to predict, what is clear is that these new platforms have far-out paced any regulation or legal frameworks.
Both sides need to be respected and protected - but, while these websites fill the vacuum that governments have created, most importantly this community needs support and advice.
We contacted Ancestory.com and 23andMe to get their response to Carly and Jack's stories.
23andMe told us:
“The [23andMe] feature that matches customers with relatives is optional, and opt-in, meaning you must explicitly choose to participate in that feature, you are not defaulted into participating”
They also told us:
“Our customer care team is specially trained and we have created specific resources for those who discover unexpected family members... designed by genetic counselors.”