… the focus isn’t genealogy …
The winds of change are clearly blowing hard at Family Tree DNA after its acquisition earlier this year.
The company announced, on January 7, that it had merged with an Australian company, myDNA, and would be led in the future by Dr. Lior Rauchberger, the chief executive officer of the Australian firm.1 That announcement made it clear that the newly merged company would “expand its product offerings … with innovative life-changing advancements.”2
As with any major corporate acquisition, that means those winds of change are going to be swirling around a lot of things.
But a survey sent out to customers over the last week or so says the focus of what’s swirling right now has nothing to do with genealogy — and everything to do with the main emphasis of the Australian firm: providing “genetic interpretations to inform an individual’s health, medical and lifestyle decisions.”3
All of the survey questions have to do with expanding the company’s offerings to health and wellness:
• “Please indicate your interest level in a genetic test that could help your doctor provide the right prescription medications and dosage for your body in relation to pain medications, antidepressants and antipsychotics, and acid reflux.”
• “Please indicate your interest level in genetic tests for carrier screening or reproductive genetics to understand your risk of passing on inherited genetic conditions to offspring.”
• “Please indicate your interest level in receiving personalized meal plans designed based on your genetic results to help you meet your health and fitness goals.”
• “Please indicate your interest level in receiving personalized workout plans designed based on your genetic results to help you meet your health and fitness goals.”
• “Please rank your interest level” (Extremely interested, Very interested, Somewhat interested, Not so interested, Not at all interested) “in learning how your genetics might impact you in the following areas: Skin aging (your ideal skin care routine); Vitamin/Supplement recommendations (what specific vitamins/supplements your body may need); Fitness traits (train safely and effectively with your DNA insights that reveal your limits and potential); Dietary intolerances (your response to caffeine, lactose intolerance etc.); Biological age (how the biological aging process has impacted your body); Nutrition traits (how your body breaks down and store fats, your appetite, weight regain and more); Hereditary disease and health risks (for example cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s); Stress and sleep.”4
Now… this doesn’t mean the company is abandoning its genealogy customers. The introduction to the survey says: “FamilyTreeDNA’s focus will always be genealogy, and we will continue our efforts to bring you new and innovative features that support you in your journey of discovery. As a result of our recent merger with myDNA, we are also looking forward to expanding our product offerings to include myDNA’s health and wellness services and would like to gauge your interest.”5
But it’s clear that the first priority — at least right now — isn’t going to be additional support of the genealogical community.
It’s going to be on seeing whether customers who helped build Family Tree DNA as a genealogical testing firm will buy into testing for health and wellness.
So the survey says…
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Survey says…,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 11 Apr 2021).
SOURCES
- See Judy G. Russell, “DNA winds of change,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 10 Jan 2021 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 11 Apr 2021). ↩
- Email, 8 Jan 2021, FTDNA to Project Administrators. ↩
- “About myDNA,” myDNA.life (https://www.mydna.life/ : accessed 11 Apr 2021). ↩
- Email, FamilyTreeDNA.com to customers, “FamilyTreeDNA Survey,” 8 Apr 2021. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
myDNA’s offerings sound like pseudoscience to me.
Survery says…. nope, nope, nope and nope. No interest in any of these items from me, anyway.
It’s all about the money–clearly they see more potential for profit in the health and wellness area than in genealogy.
I would like to understand better what the actual business change was. Was it a sale? Was it a merger? Was it an acquisition by Gene by Gene with the former MyDNA owner hired as CEO?
I checked the Texas state website and only found this.
GENE BY GENE, LTD.
Texas Taxpayer Number 32036155953
Mailing Address 1445 NORTH LOOP W STE 820 HOUSTON, TX 77008-1673
Right to Transact Business in Texas ACTIVE
State of Formation TX
Effective SOS Registration Date 04/20/2000
Texas SOS File Number 0013388010
Registered Agent Name MAX BLANKFELD
Registered Office Street Address 1445 NORTH LOOP W SUITE 820 HOUSTON, TX 77008
Who now owns the database where our DNA profiles and genealogical information is stored?
It’s described as a merger.
Agree with Kay Teeters. No interest. Seems their interest is in selling stuff to us. Meal plans? Customized exercise plans? Just based on my DNA. Huh. Sounds like they’ve got a warehouse full of snake oil.
I more-or-less try to keep up with where this kind of testing is at by reading medical and research journals. Partly because I am interested in advances in genetics in general. And partly because my brother’s cancer treatment is based on cutting edge genetic analysis to try to match his genome with appropriate treatments. So this piques my interest. As far as I can tell, not only is this a fast moving field for research and application, it is so complex that everytime some thing new comes up, they have to rethink their assumptions. My guess for the consumer market is that this company is exploiting the emerging awareness of the use of genetic analysis related to identifying Covid-19 variations to sell a product that can tell them only very superficial genetic info that falls into the realm of undefined “possibilities” about things that involve complex interactions among many factors.
As for FTDNA, it has been our family’s preferred provider of tests so far (have some coming up). But unless it is going to be run completely separately from MyDNA, we’ll look elsewhere.
Survey says…
The Legal Genealogist engages in censorship, willy-nilly for no apparent reason. Perfectly reasonable comments are censored. Is she censoring the person and not the comment?
You post a comment on this blog for the very first time late on a Sunday afternoon (which means it automatically goes into the moderation queue so that spam doesn’t get posted) and then go into a tizzy at 6:43 a.m. on Monday because (gasp!!!!!) your comment hasn’t been released for public view??? Really? Patience, grasshopper. Even a blogger is entitled to take a Sunday evening off, and the world will continue to turn if your comment waits a little while longer. Really.
If I had been asked to take this survey I would have said No Thanks. I am not against DNA testing for health issues ( I have in fact had testing done to confirm my chances of having some serious vision issues and have also had my disabled son tested to help better manage his medications) but I dealt with companies whose main focus is health, not genealogy. Skin care, vitamin recommendations, fitness or whatever is not something I think a genealogy based company should be interested in.