DATA MINING THE DECEASED : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

DATA MINING THE DECEASED : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

Film Maker Julia Creet is curious and a tad skeptical. She is asking questions you ought to.

Are you part of a "captive biomedical community" because you were so eager for your DNA data results that you didn't read the fine print? 

What happens when you submit spit samples to a huge company and the data gets sold and resold? Maybe you can find out if you're Jewish but it won't give you grandma's name. **

Iceland is the big example. Quite genetically related, it's easy to meet and marry a cousin there and young couples don't want to. Presumed Consent of the Icelandic population meant that the data got sold and sold and as of the film production date was in the hands of a company called Amgen. The Icelandic database contains just about every person in Iceland.

Besides if you get real far back your chart will become subject to Pedigree Collapse (a small starter population means you are related to everyone in some way.) And if you're transgender how much do you care about being descended from Vikings?

Refresher: you get your genetics from 1/2 your parents. 1/4 your grandparents. 1/8 your great grandparents. ... Really going so far back can mean nothing at all about your personal genetic composition.

One in four people in the United States are registered with free FamilySearch, owned by the premier force in genealogy in modern times, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint's - LDS. Members trust them. Should you?

What about when members baptised Jewish Holocaust victim Anne Frank or Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded by terrorists, after their deaths? Jews were not happy about that.

Do you agree to promote LDS when you use FamilySearch? What if you are not Christian? What if you are Pagan? If you upload documents that reveal your religion will it haunt you someday when Thought Police show up at your door? Missionary?

Ancestry, the genealogy database company (not related to this blog) is also extremely popular but costs. Some of the data - collected with the free labor of volunteers - is shared between these two giants and sold.

We really must ask more questions.

**it is possible that by locating others who share your genetics and collaborating you may share the documents that were missing and caused you to hit into a brick wall.

Note: Not everyone wants to spend eternity with the family they knew on earth and certainly not the husband or wife they had on earth. These eternally intact relationships are promised by LDS to those members who perform rituals called Ordinances within Temples. Locating ancestors for this purpose is the given reason for the LDS fixation on genealogy. I personally am into reincarnation and don't think we are in the same Soul Group for eternity. I have performed genealogy with and for LDS members, respect they have a right to their beliefs, and avoid discussion of religion. When needing to go into databases for members only, I have received the assistance of Family History Library volunteers.

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MEDICAL GENEALOGY - KEEP THOSE DEATH RECORDS IN PERSPECTIVE

A long time ago I was listening to a radio talk program by the then popular Doctor Laura.  Someone who was adopted called in and wanted to locate their birth parent.  Among the reasons why was medical information.  Doctor Laura said that medical science was so on top of things (in so many words) that this was a dumb reason to find a birth parent.  And this was before DNA and an understanding about hereditary diseases!  Needless to say I could not disagree with Doctor Laura more.

Recently I was researching for someone who has a once in a life time opportunity to tour a European country with a church group.  He and his wife plan to depart from the group and spend about a week touring through ancestor homelands.  He lost a young son to colon cancer a few years ago and then was diagnosed with it himself and is surviving.  I'm thrilled that he will be well enough to go on this trip.  So I went ahead and, beginning with his father, verified which of several candidates with a fairly common surname in a small region of a particular state was his, found his father on census records, and discovered that his grandfather, who had died before he was born, had gone through an evolution of given names, which is making finding him coming in on a steamship or naturalization records that will tell me the name of the town his grandfather left over a hundred years ago a little bit tricky. Currently I have a declaration of intent that might be his, but no completion of citizen ship documented. 

I went ahead and got the death certificate for his grandfather and from the information printed on it by the attending doctor, there was a description of lesions on the colon.  (The word cancer was not used.) Tears sprung from my eyes at the realization that there is a familial aspect to this cancer.

The reasons why someone dies...
I recently listened to an audiobook by a popular author who does some hypnosis to help people heal from trauma, including the trauma of their previous deaths and violent experiences, such as rape, loosing limbs, car accidents, death in childbirth.  Hearing a long list of reasons why, I was reminded of all the death certificates I've seen.  Some of them come with oral histories from the family, for instance a carpenter who burned up in a fire.  The doctor noted his whole body was burned.  The family says he was the victim of arson by the mob.  Reading the death certificate I would not know that, and I may check some newspaper databases to see if there is any mention of the fire - or the mob.

One adoptee I know has made medical decisions based on the fact that breast cancer is rampant in her birth mother's line, which she would not know without having found her and done the genealogy.


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