A deeply reported look at the rise of home genetic testing and the seismic shock it has had on individual lives
You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send it away to a lab
somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your
ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report
could reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense of
identity. Soon a lark becomes an obsession, an incessant desire to find
answers to questions at the core of your being, like "Who am I?" and
"Where did I come from?" Welcome to the age of home genetic testing.
In The Lost Family, journalist
Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast
social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications.
Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA,
and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while
tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless
methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic
detective story.
The Lost Family delves into the many
lives that have been irrevocably changed by home DNA tests-a technology
that represents the end of family secrets. There are the adoptees who´ve
used the tests to find their birth parents; donor-conceived adults who
suddenly discover they have more than fifty siblings; hundreds of
thousands of Americans who discover their fathers aren´t biologically
related to them, a phenomenon so common it is known as a "non-paternity
event"; and individuals who are left to grapple with their conceptions
of race and ethnicity when their true ancestral histories are
discovered. Throughout these accounts, Copeland explores the impulse
toward genetic essentialism and raises the question of how much our
genes should get to tell us about who we are. With more than thirty
million people having undergone home DNA testing, the answer to that
question is more important than ever.
Gripping and masterfully told, The Lost Family is a spectacular book on a big, timely subject.