For just £79, companies offer tests that claim to connect people with long-lost relatives, uncover family history, or expose lurking danger in the form of susceptibility to disease. They are presented as an empowering way for individuals to discover their past and take control of their own health. But the marketing and discussion surrounding direct-toconsumer genetic testing are at odds with their delivery in many ways. Genetic tests for both ancestry and health risks can be unreliable tools for consumers of colour and may reinforce incorrect notions of race and ancestry. Genetic testing companies have a customer base of eager genetic sleuths from many different backgrounds and they market accordingly, with results of varying success. For example, a 2019 Ancestry.com campaign invites Canadian consumers to “uncover the lost chapter of [their] family history” over dramatised footage of a Black woman and a white man eloping. The ad, set in the antebellum American South, suggested a narrative many viewers found overly romanticised. Wired documents numerous falsities in the ad, including the idea “that most mixed-race people in America today
26 Winter 2022 | eusci.org.uk
descend from loving, consenting relationships” and that “the North was some promised land of equal opportunity.” Ancestry.com swiftly pulled the ad, but it remains an example of the optimistic premise most ancestry testing services are based on. While many consumers will be pleasantly surprised by their results, the potential to uncover violence always looms: it just doesn’t make for a very inviting advertisement. Dig deeper and it becomes apparent that genetic testing’s plight is much worse than a 30-second ad spot. People of European ancestry make up more than three quarters of genetic study participants despite accounting for less than one quarter of the world’s population. These are the studies that genetic testing companies use to develop their services. Ancestry testing compares the DNA sent in from a customer with DNA of known ethnic origins. To provide accurate results, the company must compare tiny variations in a consumer’s DNA with a database that can indicate which variations are common in which ethnic groups. Companies such as Ancestry.com have their own databases which
diversify along with their customers but still currently give much finer detail on European ancestry than other areas. Ancestry.com separates Ireland into a whopping 85 populations, for example, in comparison to nine for the entire continent of Africa. With this in mind, it’s clear to see why they’d court Black Canadian consumers, an underrepresented demographic in genetic studies whose interest would increase not just their revenue but their accuracy as well. The problem of representation in genetic databases extends to healthcare. In 2001, a “reference genome” was compiled from numerous donors who responded to a 1997 ad in a Buffalo, New York, paper. Supposedly representing the entirety of an “average” human genetic code, the idea was to provide a comparison that scientists would use to comb through a patient’s genome for potential causes of illness. However, 70% of the genome was sourced from a single donor (whose ethnic background is unknown). Furthermore, the underlying theory is also skewed, as it’s impossible to condense the genetic variation of humanity into a standardized genome.
