Two Nouns #10 – Quantum Blood
Five years ago, 23andMe sent me a home genetic testing kit. In case you haven't heard, the company lets users send a tube of saliva to a laboratory in exchange for a readout of their likely region of ancestry, and some soothsaying about higher probability health outcomes. I remember that the kit was packaged like a vintage iPod, sheathed in sunny primary colors—a nod to the company’s Silicon Valley roots—yet containing the future-is-here plastics and barcodes of the pharmaceutical industry, so as to be clinically convincing.
I was not the average user. The test came to me for free, as part of 23andMe’s now defunct “African Ancestry Project.” At the time, some 400,000 people had joined the “community” of voluntary subjects (today, it's more than 2 million). But the majority of these test takers were Caucasian Americans—a sample inadequate to offer accurate interpretation of ancestries. Thus “to enrich our understanding of the human story and increase diversity in genetic research,” 23andMe sought individuals with four grandparents born in west Africa. The working logic: Genetic information from people like me would give their databases deeper roots.
It was quite recently that 23andMe began the tenacious consumerization of a half century of leaps in genetic understanding. I am well within the age range to remember the Human Genome Project as a tinny report on NPR, or a primetime news report on basic cable, with sober correspondents announcing the milestones of progress in our race to understand the As, Ts, Gs and Cs of our common humanity. And I’ve led a life more connected to genetics than most – my mother and my sister are professionals. But I hadn’t once considered my DNA —until the package arrived.
Core bae Jeff Goldblum as James Watson in "Race for the Double Helix." You’re welcome.
People take these tests for fundamentally personal reasons – curiosity, morbid or not (for its first six years, 23andMe would flag, confidently, risks of hereditary conditions such as heart disease, certain cancers, and diabetes), a desire to connect with the ancestors, a smell check of family legend. Genealogical testing is apparently now the second-most popular hobby in America, and a billion dollar annual business. 23andMe, Ancestry.com, DecodeMe, Helix and a short list of other direct to consumer services promise self-knowledge on the relatively cheap. For just $99, a vendor can lay out a web of hereditary information in the style of a bank statement.
The technology, like all technologies these days, seems to have arrived to consumers riddled with hidden tradeoffs and nefarious consequences. An early flag came from the FDA, which ordered 23andMe to “immediately discontinue” marketing their services, after the company couldn’t produce information supporting its marketing claims. This left the service dangling in Herbalife territory, and the company has since scaled back substantially its claims of medical conclusiveness. More recently, it’s been reported that voluntary genetic databasing makes it possible to identify up to 60% of white Americans.* Buzzfeed reporters have written about the ghoulish phenomenon of people taking genetic tests to shore up their white nationalist bona fides. You can prowl YouTube for a smattering of vlogs that use 23andMe to entertain, bewilder, affirm and affront.
White supremacist Richard Spencer’s 23andMe results.
This was easily the weirdest offshoot of “receipts culture.” Until senator Elizabeth Warren decided to release genetic analysis corroborating family rumors of a Cherokee ancestor. Leave aside her stooping to debunk a childish insult I won’t reproduce here. That decision makes me seethe, just as when I think about Barack Obama publishing his long form birth certificate at the behest of Donald Trump. Leave aside Warren’s (problematic, ambiguous) claim of membership in the Cherokee nation. This whole saga reinforces that there is zero connection between identity and ancestry. In earnest moments on my book tour, seeking to connect the contemporary lives of people in Africa to the experience of Americans, Brits, or others in the west, I was known to muse, “We are all African.” But I never meant it. It's not true.
Quite a lot, alas, hangs on what we believe to be our identity. Following this bruising season of politics, especially in but not limited to the US, nothing has seemed clearer. When your self-image or material fate depends on who others believe you are, the promise of purity pulls like a tractor beam on some of us. But the testing trend mislabels fiction as fact. In a November 2013 letter chastising 23andMe, the FDA wrote: “Serious concerns are raised if test results are not adequately understood by patients.” Aside from being a triumph of the passive voice, the phrase underscores the problem with people drawing major life conclusions based on a tube of spit. The agency was referring to health decisions, but the danger applies as easily to our tech-inspired formations of racial belonging.
Anyway, I never sent the swab back. As a first generation American, I've lived with a very specific kind of privilege—which is to say precise knowledge of my national and ethnic heritage. It’s a delicate distinction that, given my fierce attachments to Nigeria, and Africa, has substantively affected my life. Less the various allergies and imperfections of my tribe and age, I’ve enjoyed good health. And in the end I just thought the offer was insultingly cheap. No one wants to end up in a Henrietta Lacks situation.
It seems inevitable that precision medicine and countless other leaps forward will be linked to consumer knowledge of our biological identity. But I hope we're escaping the trap of ancestry as social identity. I’ve just been recommended Ed Yong's book on the microbiome (shout to Whitman) that offers a path forward. It bridges the twin logics of nature and nurture, suggesting that who we are depends on bacteria, which in turn depends on where in the world we have lived. It’s massively more interesting to believe that I am what I eat.
Have you taken one of these tests? I’d like to know, and maybe why if you want to share.
Something to look at:
I attended the 1:54 Art fair in London and was fully taken by the work of Marion Boehm.
Something to read:
A meta-read on a newsletter company built and run by women. Core quote from Noreen Malone: "In an era when many young men seem to be taking the Reddit conspiracy express train to Alt-Right Town, the Skimm’s loyal, growing readership looks suddenly, surprisingly useful for the functioning of democracy."
More for media nerds: FilmStruck is dead. A prescient anti-streaming argument.
Americans, please vote.
Dayo