Many people have had concerns about DNA because it is
something new and it provides a lot of information, and it's
information that in some cases you can't get anywhere else. And
so there's concerns about how this information could be used.
Today, I want to talk about whether or not your DNA testing
can be used by government or insurance companies in an
unfavorable light against you. So, the first thing I think
that is important to talk about is when you are having your DNA
tested, you are not having all of it tested unless you're
getting a full sequence DNA. You're actually having just a
small portion of it. Now, most humans share 99.9% of their
DNA. And so the 99.9% that we all share doesn't matter.
Everybody knows what that is because it's all the same. So,
really it's just that 1%. that we don't share that is
important. However, when you're taking a DNA test, you're not
even testing all of that 1%. You're only testing a fraction
of that 1%. There's still quite a bit of your DNA that hasn't
been tested that has information that in many cases
is what is going to be valuable in some of the situations we're
talking about. But the more and more we learn about DNA, the
more we find out that DNA is working in conjunction with a
lot of other environmental factors in producing who we
are. So, let's go through some of the ways that government and
insurance companies might want to use DNA or how they could
and whether or not these commercial tests would be
helpful to them. So, starting with insurance. Now, insurance,
the company's goal is to make money. And they do this by
looking at risk. What is the risk of something happening and
how much we're going to have to pay out because of that? And
then, once we start looking at a whole bunch of people, we can
start to make this risk pool and get an idea of okay I know
that this many things is going to happen each year I'm
going to have to pay out this much so therefore to ensure
that risk with all these people I need to charge them X amount
of dollars. And I will make X amount of millions of dollars
at the end of the year and still be able to pay out all of
these claims. So starting with car insurance. Could DNA be
useful for car insurance? Well, what is being insured against?
And in this case we're insuring against car wrecks. We're
insuring against trees falling on our cars. We're insuring
against, you know, any of these catastrophic things that
happen. So, does DNA influence that? Well, DNA doesn't really
influence whether the tree's going to fall in your car. It's
a matter of where you park it. As far as accident, there
might be some DNA markers that have to do with risky behavior.
Whether you are going to drive fast, whether you wear a seat
belt, you know, things like that. But these are also
behaviors that we can protect against. In in some cases now
with cars, we have the annoying beeps. If you put your seat
belt on right away that continues to beep. I'm not sure
if I even have owned a car in the last 10 years that
didn't have that. And so certain safety features have been built
into the vehicles which can mitigate for any of these risk
factors. Now, from a commercial DNA testing standpoint, I have
not seen any reports that talk about definitively risk
behavior. There are some reports on 23andMe that that
generalize about risk but they point out that hey, this is
involved with lots of, lots of different markers along your
DNA and there are some environmental factors with this
as well. And so because the genetics of risk haven't really
been characterized very well. There's really not an incentive
I think for insurance companies to worry about this. So, in
this case, I don't think your car insurance company is ever
going to ask you for your commercial DNA test in order to
determine what your rate is. There are much better factors
to determining your rate. Namely how many tickets you've had?
How many accidents you've had? Your age and your sex. We know
that male drivers are worse than female drivers, and
younger drivers are worse than older drivers. And that's really
going to be the detemrination of your car insurance rates. So next we go
on to home insurance rates. Now, this is also similar to
car insurance. We are insuring against things like theft, like
fire, you know, destruction to property, anything like that.
That for the most part, don't have anything to do with
genetics. They have more to do with where the home is, where
it's located, your socioeconomic status, whether you
smoke. Things like that that are much better indicators of what
the overall risk is. And so while there maybe some genetic
factors and I'm trying to think myself of anything that I've
even read that might be related to homeowners insurance. This is
one insurance that I can't think of a genetic component
that would actually apply to it and so, I doubt you're ever
going to have a homeowner's insurance company ask you for a
genetic profile. Simply because it's going to cost them money
to analyze that and determine what it is. And they're in the
business of making money and if there's very little chance that
this actually affects it, they're not going to spend the
money in doing that. So, no, you're not going to have to
worry about your homeowners insurance being affected by any
commercial genetic genealogy test. General liability
insurance, this is sort of the catch all that a lot of
businesses or individuals use. Basically, in case somebody
sues you for something. You know. Maybe they get injured on
your property. Maybe they get injured, you know, in a car
accident and your auto insurance has certain limits or
your homeowners insurance has certain limits. General
liability insurance basically covers that. It's really cheap
in a lot of cases because there's very little opportunity
or chance that you're probably going to be sued for more than
these limits. And so it doesn't cost that much and gives you a
million dollars of coverage for a few bucks a month or so. And
there's really no genetic component too. This is really
to cover anything else in life that might possibly happen not
with genetics. So, no, I don't think that you're ever going to
have to worry about general liability insurance asking
about your genetic genealogy tests. Now, we're getting into
some things that might. We have disability or accidental death
and dismemberment insurance. These might have a genetic component.
Again, talking about risk. There are some genetics to risk
although it's not very well understood right now. But there
appears to be some genetics that have an effect on your
ability to handle risk or take risks. Things like that. Now,
disability and accidental death and dismemberment usually are
not necessarily talking about things that you're doing risky
but sometimes things that just happen. There's a risk
component but there's also more of a purely accident component
to it. And so because of this I don't think that this is going
to ever see a genetic component. You know, an insurance company
asking you to take a genetic test in order to do this. But
now we start to get into something that we know is
related to genetics health dental and vision insurance. All
of these have components that are directly affected by your
genetics. For instance your your teeth structure and things like
that we can go and point to certain genetic markers that
might influence that. Your vision- whether you're
nearsighted far sided or you have some other things we can
trace some of that back to the genetics that you have. And then
you're just overall health. That can also be traced back to
certain genetic markers. The key here to remember I think is
that most of these things are not solely dependent on
genetics. Genetics may play a role but there are other
factors involved. And so when it comes to insurance and an
insurance company, what they are looking for is they're
looking for really the cheapest way that they can determine
risk for this group. And how can you determine that? Well, we
have lots of study before genetics even came about as far
as body type, or health. And there's certain areas that are
clear risk factors. For instance, all of your health
forms almost always ask you your height and your weight.
Which is just a quick general measure of your overall health
by calculating your BMI. It doesn't tell you everything but
it gives you a idea of where you fit on the obesity scale.
And right now in in the United States as well as in other
countries there's a significant portion of the population that
is obese. It's something that's just never happened before in
history, really, I think because we've never had such access to
food in history. There is that that is actually a pretty good
indicator of overall health outcomes because there's lots
of things related to it. These forms that you fill out
for these also ask you if you smoke, if you drink. These are
two other factors that greatly influence other health aspects.
And so by filling out the simple form, answering just
those four basic questions, they have a pretty decent idea
as far as the general risk category that you fall into.
Then, they can ask about your health history. What problems
you've had? What problems your parents have had? What problems
your grandparents have had? Because what we found over 100
years of research is that a lot of these health outcomes are
inherited. Now, there may be some other factors involved with
it but that heritability actually matters. So, by
filling out a simple questionnaire, you can actually
pinpoint where somebody fits into an overall risk category.
A questionnaire is extremely cheap, whereas, a genetic
genealogy test, well, we know that they cost about $100. Now
if we're going to be specific to these certain aspects of
this. Because all of your commercial genetic genealogy
test don't cover all of the things that would be important
for health, dental, and vision. If there was a test designed
for that, you're still looking at $100 or so a customer.
Whereas a survey, you fill it out and you run it through the
Scantron, you're talking pennies to actually process
that. And so for weighing how much extra information we're
going to get from a genic genealogy test versus just a
survey with questions that we know already. There's probably
a few cases where we might gain some more information. But when
we're talking about thousands or millions of people, a simple
survey is going to cover most of the information we need for
a risk factor. So, in the future, if these genetic
genealogy test or or just commercial genealogy test,
commercial genetic test get more accurate as far as the
research that goes into it. And the amount of information that
we're able to glean from that as far as determining risk.
Then, you might see in the future a for health insurance
that you're being asked to take a genealogy test. But I doubt
it's ever going to be the genetic genealogy test that you
see from Ancestry, 23andMe, MyHeritage. Simply because they are
not designed or targeted to that kind of information. In the
United States there's also a law, the GINA, law that prohibits
the use of certain genetic information for determining
health insurance issues. Next we get to life insurance. Now
like health insurance there are some genetic components that
influence your life expectancy. There's actually some diseases
and some genetic abnormalities, genetic defects that pretty
much guarantee an early death. Now, this is in a tiny portion
of the population but these do exist still. So, when we're
looking at genetic tests and particularly at these
commercial genetic tests. Would they be useful for a life
insurance company? My gut reaction here is no and here is
why. Almost all of the markers, the SNPs that are used for
these commercial genetic genealogy tests. They want to
have at least a 1% allele rate. In other words, at least 1% of
the people that test have the alternate allele as opposed to
the majority allele. So, it's something that is not
necessarily common in the population but is not super
rare. Most these genetic abnormalities that would cause
premature death are extremely rare, less than 1%, less than
0.1%. And so, they're not being tested by these commercial
genetic genealogy companies. Now, for a life insurance
company, could they design their own test to be able to do
this? Absolutely. Could they ask you to do this? Absolutely.
If you sign up for life insurance, they have a litany
of questions. They probably have a health exam. You know,
where they take your blood, they weigh you, measure you,
you know, in view you in order to determine that risk category
similar to the the health insurance. And that determines
what your overall rate is. The question then is is would it be
worth it for them to identify the specific genetic
abnormalities in people so that they either have to charge a
higher rate or don't insure them? My guess is no because
once again, we're talking about ensuring millions of people. And
spending a few $100 for you know the blood testing and having
somebody come out and interview you and take you know whatever
vital measurements they need from that is sufficient to be
able to put you in a risk category. Particularly we're
talking about term life insurance that you may just be
having for 10 years or 15 years when you're still in your
healthy young years. But this is something that you know from a
future standpoint depending on how things expand that it might
be the case. Now can any of these insurance companies ask
you for your Ancestry results or other results like that?
Yeah, I'm sure they could ask you unless it's actually
prohibited by law. But not all of them would be. And so if. If
any of them did and you aren't comfortable with that
information, you could simply go to another insurance company
right now to find that. Now, the next one is the government.
Could the government use this and it really in particular the
criminal justice system? Could your Ancestry DNA or
MyHeritage or 23andMe be used by the criminal justice system? Well,
we already know that it has been used for finding unknown
criminals with DNA that was left at crime scenes. It's been
used for identifying victims that otherwise had no
identification on them. So, it is actively being used. Now,
primarily it is with GEDmatch database and with FamilyTreeDNA.
Ancestry and 23andMe and MyHeritage do not allow police
access to their database for criminal familial searching.
That being said, at least in the US and most other countries
in the world, there are certain procedures as far as legal
procedures where they could issue a warrant for inspection
of database for some reason. Now they would have to show before
a judge that this was legitimate. And the companies
then of course have the ability to fight that. And in fact there
have been a couple of cases in the US where they were
presented with with a warrant that was in fought and and no
information was given. On the other hand, the place where
I see that these are most used would be most used from a
criminal standpoint is simply if there was criminals that
actually had their DNA tested because they were interested in
their ethncity results. And now their DNA is out in those
databases. And particularly GEDMatch and Family Tree DNA where
if a crime scene DNA was uploaded and you had a
one-to-one match, then you've really found who your
suspect is. Or at least their identical twin, one of the two.
But in any case right now as it stands in the United States
other than through the legal process and through most
countries in the world through the legal process your DNA data
that is held by Ancestry, 23andMe, MyHeritage is not going to
ever be used for anything within, involing the criminal
justice system. Now I can't predict the future. And so I
can't say that that's always going to be the case. We'll have
to see in 10 years, in 15 years, or in 20 years, what has
changed in society? What access is available? And whether any
of the laws have changed as well? That might change my
answer to some of these. But as of right now, I hope that that
helps you understand a little bit about where some of this
information can be used and where it can't be used. And
where it's really not cost effective to use at all. Now,
if you'd like to learn something else about DNA, then,
watch this video up above. But if you want to learn something
more about genealogy in general watch one of my wife's videos down
below.