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Just logged into 23 and me to see my new matches. I got an ad saying I could unlock advanced tools for $29. It says you can cancel at any time so it's a yearly fee. I'll link to a blog about it.
I'm a bit ticked off. Here I paid $150 for the health test thinking it covered me for everything they had to offer, now they pull this. Of course I'm not the only one ticked off, everyone that's commented to the blog feel the same way, it should have been included in the health portion since it's expensive. Now they make a new category just so they can charge more money.
I may subscribe to it because it's giving a medication report. I have a lot of medication issues. According to the blog, you can type in medications to see if they're on the list of ones your body can't process. It would be nice if they'd tell you allergies to meds and vaccines. The shingles vaccine almost closed my throat. I'd love to know what I'm allergic to so I can make a decision about the COVID vaccine.
I'm interested to know what the advanced DNA tools will be. If anyone does it can you post to let us know your experience and if it's worth it or not? I'm going to reply to the blog to see if they can tell me exactly what's advanced about it.
What’s included in 23andMe+? Stay on the cutting edge of genetics research with features as unique as your DNA. No more spit required. Cancel any time.
* Exclusive Heart Health reports - Heart disease affects millions of people worldwide. With 23andMe+, get a better picture of what may be in store for your heart’s health with new Atrial Fibrillation, High Blood Pressure, and LDL Cholesterol reports. You’ll also learn what your DNA might say about your likelihood to develop coronary artery disease.
* Pharmacogenetics reports - Medications don’t always “work” the same way in different bodies. Discover how your DNA may impact how your body processes certain medications with three new Pharmacogenetics reports.* Reports include a printable summary to start an informed discussion with your healthcare provider. From the blog - For a complete list of the 6 variants tested, visit Pharmacogenetics Important Test Information.
* Migraine Report - Discover your genetic likelihood for getting migraine headaches. Learn about common migraine triggers and onset patterns across age and sex so that you can have an informed discussion with your healthcare provider.
* Obstructive Sleep Apnea report (powered by 23andMe Research) — learn if you have a greater chance of developing the condition based on your genetics and, if so, how you can take action.
* Ongoing new reports and features — get even more personalized genetic reports and more actionable insights throughout the calendar year.
*Advanced DNA Relatives filters - You never know who you’ll meet in the farthest reaches of your family tree. Gain access to up to 5,000 DNA Relatives to help you fill in the gaps in your family story. Then use advanced DNA Relatives filters to help you with your genealogy sleuthing, whether you’re an amateur or seasoned researcher. The blog says advanced filtering of DNA relatives and access to up to 3,500 more DNA relatives.
How can they tell you all these things? I think many are acquired in life and so they wouldn't show up in your DNA.
"Learn about migraine triggers..." You could probably google that. I'm not so sure it would be in your DNA. I know I got my mold allergy from living in a moldy house--no one else in my family has a mold allergy so I don't think it's in our DNA. Maybe the pharmacy drugs and how your body would metabolize them, but I don't know.
I ranted about this on my blog, though I focused more on the expanded match list you get with the subscription, because this meant they quietly reduced our match lists from 2,000 to 1,500: Genealogical Musings: 23andMe: Worse and Worse
I realize it's more about the extra health reports, and I guess they can do that because they're the main DNA health testing company.
How can they tell you all these things? I think many are acquired in life and so they wouldn't show up in your DNA.
Yes, environmental influences are a factor as well, but there is still evidence of genetic predispositions. They determine this the same way they do for any health/wellness/trait report - they study the genetic profiles of a group of people who are prone to migraines, for example, particularly people who have had them their whole lives, and look for common markers they share. They compare that with a control group who don't get migraines and don't share those same markers to determine a statistical likelihood that certain markers are associated with a predisposition to migraines. Having those markers doesn't necessarily mean one definitely gets migraines, but it does make it more likely, and not having those markers doesn't mean you can't get migraines, though it does make it less likely.
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"Learn about migraine triggers..." You could probably google that. I'm not so sure it would be in your DNA.
It could be - they would just do the same as I described above but specifically for certain migraine triggers.
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I know I got my mold allergy from living in a moldy house--no one else in my family has a mold allergy so I don't think it's in our DNA. Maybe the pharmacy drugs and how your body would metabolize them, but I don't know.
They make it clear on their health reports that it's merely a genetic predisposition or likelihood, not a surety either way. Like I have a "Slightly increased risk" of Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease. They make it clear that doesn't mean I will definitely develop Alzheimer's, or that people who don't have an increased risk of it won't ever develop it. It is NOT diagnostic, and they make that very clear. It's just supposed to be something to discuss with your doctor and keep an eye on because sometimes early diagnosis is important, and knowing about a genetic predisposition could be the key to an early diagnosis if you ever do develop it.
Yes, environmental influences are a factor as well, but there is still evidence of genetic predispositions. They determine this the same way they do for any health/wellness/trait report - they study the genetic profiles of a group of people who are prone to migraines, for example, particularly people who have had them their whole lives, and look for common markers they share. They compare that with a control group who don't get migraines and don't share those same markers to determine a statistical likelihood that certain markers are associated with a predisposition to migraines. Having those markers doesn't necessarily mean one definitely gets migraines, but it does make it more likely, and not having those markers doesn't mean you can't get migraines, though it does make it less likely.
It could be - they would just do the same as I described above but specifically for certain migraine triggers.
They make it clear on their health reports that it's merely a genetic predisposition or likelihood, not a surety either way. Like I have a "Slightly increased risk" of Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease. They make it clear that doesn't mean I will definitely develop Alzheimer's, or that people who don't have an increased risk of it won't ever develop it. It is NOT diagnostic, and they make that very clear. It's just supposed to be something to discuss with your doctor and keep an eye on because sometimes early diagnosis is important, and knowing about a genetic predisposition could be the key to an early diagnosis if you ever do develop it.
Yeh, I guess it's that age old controversy about nature vs nurture. A genetic predisposition for allergies does run in my mother's family, for instance. When I used to try to find some of our ancestors I'd run into distant relatives who always had allergies and would joke that allergies came from that family. Probably some people could get something out of these health reports.
Just logged into 23 and me to see my new matches. I got an ad saying I could unlock advanced tools for $29. It says you can cancel at any time so it's a yearly fee. I'll link to a blog about it.
Personally I wouldnt bother with it, 23andme is NOT the same as Ancestry, I did the DNA with 23 first and it didn't find much, people kept telling me to do it again at Ancestry, I almost didnt because it felt I was just duplicating, but I did and ANCESTRY found my family!
23 is geared more for people who want to know more about their ethnicity, but when you look at the BS it tells you in the ancestry history charts, it says you are 12% this and 3% that and 46% the other thing, and that say, your Irish ancestors came from the UK, well gee, like today but more so- people freely migrated all over, and what we know as countries in Europe we think are HUGE like the USA, in fact most countries over there- are no larger than US STATES! It was super easy for people to go over the water from Ireland to the UK or vice-versa, or travel a bit more and move to France or Romania, there werent the massive restrictions like today with passports, immigration laws and all that stuff back in the 1800s, even coming here in the 1800s only took was enough money for a ticket to get on a boat, being healthy and being able to answer a few questions about your health, you were examined by a doctor and if you were healthy you went to Manhattan and you found a place to live.
So what I'm getting at is, 23 is mostly for fun, to explore POSSIBLE ethic background history, but like I said- just because it says you are 3% ancient mongolian or some such is meaningless- people migrated all over.
Don't waste your money, Ancestry is where you do SERIOUS, extensive family research and more.
The "reports" you mentioned are pretty useless, even if you learn you have a 60% chance of having athsma or something, because your 5th removed great aunt had it, what can you possibly DO with that? you cant prevent something like that, you deal with it IF you get it.
Oh and good luck with the "cancel anytime" thing! SURE, you tell them you want to cancel and somehow another billing cycle goes by and opps, sorry, we never received your cancellation request and you are 3/4 the way into the next billing cycle and we have to bill you for this month too.
When you see your DNA matches showing things like 1802 DNA matches you go WOW!! but as you scroll down the list of matches you find after about the 2nd page all you see are relatives that are like 5th or 6th or 8th cousins sharing less than 0.5% of your DNA, I didnt bother trying to contact those people because the distancy is so great and you have almost nothing in common, no life and relationship built up either. I put my cutoff point no further back than 4th cousin
I ranted about this on my blog, though I focused more on the expanded match list you get with the subscription, because this meant they quietly reduced our match lists from 2,000 to 1,500: Genealogical Musings: 23andMe: Worse and Worse
I realize it's more about the extra health reports, and I guess they can do that because they're the main DNA health testing company.
I'm mainly interested in the "advanced DNA filters", I even commented on their blog but I see my comment is gone. I don't know if it has to be approved or if they flat out hid it. I told the mods that I know they can only give certain canned responses but I wanted to know exactly what it meant.
Your blog was helpful. I should have known but it sounded like you were done with 23 and me. I'm surprised you didn't post it here when you wrote it.
Your explanation to innewengland about migraines makes sense. I never opted in to allow 23 and me to use my DNA for health. I also don't answer their questions. They had people that opted in to both, they collected that data and now they're using it to make more money off of these people that opted in.
I went to the link to see if I had to upgrade my chip like your blog says, it's only telling me I need to do the $29 subscription, not a chip update so I wonder if mine was one of the early version 5 chips.
When I was at 23 and me yesterday looking at these supposed new matches, most are distant. I had a dozen that were 3rd or 4th. Do you know how they're working the matches they do show us? I'll be ticked if they're not giving me closer newer matches. They can take all of my distant ones because they do me no good.
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Originally Posted by Sculptor
Personally I wouldnt bother with it, 23andme is NOT the same as Ancestry, I did the DNA with 23 first and it didn't find much, people kept telling me to do it again at Ancestry, I almost didnt because it felt I was just duplicating, but I did and ANCESTRY found my family!
23 is geared more for people who want to know more about their ethnicity, but when you look at the BS it tells you in the ancestry history charts, it says you are 12% this and 3% that and 46% the other thing, and that say, your Irish ancestors came from the UK, well gee, like today but more so- people freely migrated all over, and what we know as countries in Europe we think are HUGE like the USA, in fact most countries over there- are no larger than US STATES! It was super easy for people to go over the water from Ireland to the UK or vice-versa, or travel a bit more and move to France or Romania, there werent the massive restrictions like today with passports, immigration laws and all that stuff back in the 1800s, even coming here in the 1800s only took was enough money for a ticket to get on a boat, being healthy and being able to answer a few questions about your health, you were examined by a doctor and if you were healthy you went to Manhattan and you found a place to live.
So what I'm getting at is, 23 is mostly for fun, to explore POSSIBLE ethic background history, but like I said- just because it says you are 3% ancient mongolian or some such is meaningless- people migrated all over.
Don't waste your money, Ancestry is where you do SERIOUS, extensive family research and more.
The "reports" you mentioned are pretty useless, even if you learn you have a 60% chance of having athsma or something, because your 5th removed great aunt had it, what can you possibly DO with that? you cant prevent something like that, you deal with it IF you get it.
Oh and good luck with the "cancel anytime" thing! SURE, you tell them you want to cancel and somehow another billing cycle goes by and opps, sorry, we never received your cancellation request and you are 3/4 the way into the next billing cycle and we have to bill you for this month too.
When you see your DNA matches showing things like 1802 DNA matches you go WOW!! but as you scroll down the list of matches you find after about the 2nd page all you see are relatives that are like 5th or 6th or 8th cousins sharing less than 0.5% of your DNA, I didnt bother trying to contact those people because the distancy is so great and you have almost nothing in common, no life and relationship built up either. I put my cutoff point no further back than 4th cousin
I don't doubt you're right about cancel any time because they're all bad. I had to cancel my world explorer subscription with ancestry twice. I signed up by accident. I didn't use it for 4 months, had tried to get them to extend it for 4 months but they refused. I surely wouldn't pay full price, I never paid full price for any of my DNA kits.
I only did 23 and me to get the experience and it was a waste of $150 because the health wasn't even useful to me. Promethease which was free, had better health information.
I wasn't impressed with their ethnicity report either. I'm Hungarian with an Italian few times great grandparent that I have not found yet. Ancestry, My Heritage and GEDmatch all say Italian. 23 and me is saying Greek. They got the Hungarian Eastern European right though. I do know it's on my dad's side because I tested my uncle, he has more Italian then me.
Another thing I did that I shouldn't have, I associated my google log in with 23 and me when I already joined using email and password. I have to disassociate it the next time I'm there on my computer. I may do it today.
When I was at 23 and me yesterday looking at these supposed new matches, most are distant. I had a dozen that were 3rd or 4th. Do you know how they're working the matches they do show us? I'll be ticked if they're not giving me closer newer matches. They can take all of my distant ones because they do me no good.
3rd is fairly close, and the system- either 23 or Ancestry estimates that number, but logically anything further than 4th cousin has so little actual genetic connection to you, the bagboy in the supermarket at random is probably about that close, all humans are related anyway.
What you want is the closer relatives that know other family members and family history related to you.
It has been my experiance and that of a number of others- that a LOT of people in the 3rd or further cousin level never respond to messages sent thru the system. I sent several messages to one cousin and I guess her son who had the same last name she did, neither of them ever responded, heard that from a couple of others who did the same thing.
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Originally Posted by Roselvr
I only did 23 and me to get the experience and it was a waste of $150 because the health wasn't even useful to me. Promethease which was free, had better health information.
I wasn't impressed with their ethnicity report either. I'm Hungarian with an Italian few times great grandparent that I have not found yet. Ancestry, My Heritage and GEDmatch all say Italian. 23 and me is saying Greek. They got the Hungarian Eastern European right though. I do know it's on my dad's side because I tested my uncle, he has more Italian then me.
Another thing I did that I shouldn't have, I associated my google log in with 23 and me when I already joined using email and password. I have to disassociate it the next time I'm there on my computer. I may do it today.
I did 23 only because I didnt know better and they had lots of ads out, Ancestry was FAR better, and you can generate a visual family tree on your account which 23 doesnt have.
Promethease I did along with GEDmatch too.
See, your ethnicity report jives with what I said earlier- most European countries are little bigger than many US states and people moved/move and migrated frequently, especially long ago due to food shortages, diseases, financial opportunities and more, so just because the report says Aunt Mildred's part of your tree came from Romania or something really doesnt say much, because "Aunt Mildred" COULD have been born in Italy and her parents moved to Romania to live, like I said- that kind of report in 23 is more for "fun" or entertainment than any serious scientific genetic research.
I think it was 60 minutes or the like who did a show where two maybe twin sisters did a DNA test and discovered they got different reports on ethnicity! It's really not very accurate and I dont believe the health report is accurate either, the science of connecting DNA/genetics to specific diseases is in it's infantry, it's so complex and there's more than one cause for many diseases which makes it harder to pinpoint.
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Originally Posted by Roselvr
I'm Hungarian with an Italian few times great grandparent that I have not found yet
Curious if you have been to Hungary or speak/write the language, it looks VERY hard!
I have some "holes" in my tree as well, I know that Mary Wanser on my mom's side came from Ireland and that her husband was Charles Wanser, but nobody knows what her maiden name was. I tried every which way to figure it out, I used the Ellis Island database to see what ship she came over on (I know what year she came) but it was amazing how many 18 year old girls named Mary came from Ireland that year, it was like 1,800 !! I narrowed the list down to about half that by eliminating all the girls who said they were heading to family etc in other states, my Mary stayed in NY and there was no family to head to.
900 names with no further way to narrow it down, might as well be 9 million.
So I tried looking for a marriage certificate in either name, well I found that you need to know what COUNTY they married in which is unknown, but I searched a lot and no certificate was found, it was like they never actually got married. I found no death certificate for Charles
yet Mary was in the census listed as a "widower" Charles apparenly just vanished.
Ireland opened it's archives they have left, much was destroyed long ago, but you need a surname or some other details to search with besides "Mary" so I doubt I'll ever make a connection there. All I know is she came from South Ireland.
My mom's father was also Irish, his parents are as far back as I could find, so there's a hole there, all I know is his father was an engineer for the Long Island railroad and that he won awards, but then again, trying to search for records or anything on someone with a name like John F. Kelly, well it just brings up so much stuff you can't narrow down.
I consider that stuff just for fun. You get what you get. For $150-200 you get a lot more than was possible 15 years ago.
A relative has continuing health issues and her doctor did a DNA test, I have no idea which one, and it said she had a gene that is predisposed to cancer. She found it beneficial. We have one great grandparent that died of cancer in his 40s, so I’m assuming that’s where it came from. I haven’t taken the test myself, don’t know if I will. I’m not sure if it’s something I want to know right now.
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