Speaker 1: It's been so hot outside.
Speaker 2: Man, what I was not ready for the summer. It
Speaker 2: went straight from cold wintertime to ninety five degrees one
Speaker 2: hundred percent humidity.
Speaker 1: And when you feel like that, once you get past
Speaker 1: the pollen part.
Speaker 2: It's hard for me to get past the fallen part.
Speaker 1: The immediate feeling is like, it feels just like that
Speaker 1: Donald Glover song. It sounds like summer. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: like family reunion and real hot dogs. It's crispy. I
Speaker 1: want a burnt one. I love it. Summer is family
Speaker 1: reunion time. It is. I haven't been to a family
Speaker 1: reunion in a couple of years. I didn't go to
Speaker 1: the last one. The one before that. My family came
Speaker 1: to DC, and so you've been everybody that's in my
Speaker 1: family that listens, know, you've been calling us country and
Speaker 1: so all those country folks when we're in DC having
Speaker 1: a good time, I believe.
Speaker 2: That you all are southern and not country.
Speaker 1: I don't want to no, that's because somebody corrected you
Speaker 1: on Instagram. That's because someone corrected you on Instagram.
Speaker 2: So you said country, I say.
Speaker 1: Southern, Southern. What I want to know is this summer,
Speaker 1: are people going to switch from Frankie Beverly a maze
Speaker 1: before I let go to Beyonce, before I let go.
Speaker 1: Are the old people gonna let us do it? Okay?
Speaker 2: So one thing that we know is that old folks
Speaker 2: love a line dance. Yes, so especially one with instructions.
Speaker 2: You don't have to memorize, you just exactly. Beyonce tells
Speaker 2: us exactly what to do, and old people love that,
Speaker 2: so they got they gotta switch over.
Speaker 1: I hope my mom is listening. She loves line.
Speaker 2: Dancing, she does, and she is one of the young
Speaker 2: people that love them. You remember that time we were
Speaker 2: line dancing in your house?
Speaker 1: Yes in North Carolina? Yes, child. We were working up
Speaker 1: a sweat.
Speaker 2: Missus Wattley was outstepping all of us.
Speaker 1: Man, you're gonna twist your ankle trying to keep up.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. I'm t T and I'm Zachiah.
Speaker 2: And from Spotify Studios. This is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: I think one of my favorite things about family reunions
Speaker 1: is just seeing how alike everybody is. Like my mom
Speaker 1: and one of her first cousins, they look just alike.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you look like somebody in your family?
Speaker 2: Everyone tells me that I look just like my father's mom.
Speaker 2: They're saying that, it's like uncanny is crazy, genetics is
Speaker 2: a weird thing, because I'm like, how when you know
Speaker 2: I have a whole other side of my family, how
Speaker 2: do I look just like right, hurt and not like
Speaker 2: anybody else.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because when everyone's together, you start looking
Speaker 1: at things and noticing things that you never noticed before.
Speaker 1: And so I have like a second cousin. And people say, oh,
Speaker 1: y'all look so much alike, and I'm like, that's my
Speaker 1: that's a distance. It's a second cousin, you know, versus
Speaker 1: me and my mom or me and my dad. Someone
Speaker 1: saying that we look just alike.
Speaker 2: Right, I know, me and all my sisters have the
Speaker 2: same pinky toe? What same exact pinky toe?
Speaker 1: What is it? I don't need you don't even want
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 2: It's not like what it was not cute?
Speaker 1: But aren't those things like so strange? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And we get it from our mom because our mom
Speaker 2: has the same pinky toe.
Speaker 1: And how come nobody got your dad pinky toe? Have
Speaker 1: you even seen your dad's pinky toe? I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to he wears sampals. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: it's like all these things, Like I feel like the
Speaker 1: family reunions turn everybody into like a genealogist or honestly,
Speaker 1: a forensic detective. You're like, hey, all of us got
Speaker 1: this pinky toe, then somebody else come along you like,
Speaker 1: you don't have that pinkye to see a pinky Are
Speaker 1: you really in the family right now? You got the mall.
Speaker 2: If you follow the key on Instagram, you see that
Speaker 2: she has a mole right above her mouth.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. It's my reset button.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's her reset button, her power up button, all
Speaker 2: the button. Anytime Zakia needs anything, she could press that
Speaker 2: that mole and she'll get it. Where does the mole
Speaker 2: come from? It's so distinct.
Speaker 1: I think I'm only one with a mole. But I
Speaker 1: think my mom and her brothers have like soft, curly hair, Okay.
Speaker 1: And then I went natural and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: my hair is coarse. It's about a four C. And
Speaker 1: I asked my dad. He was my dad's bald now
Speaker 1: so conveniently, He's like, no, no, no, I have waves.
Speaker 1: I have waves. I never heard my hair is not
Speaker 1: like that. And I'm like, hey, playboy, either your hair
Speaker 1: was like that or you're not my father or you
Speaker 1: are not the father. So yeah, I feel like, now
Speaker 1: you don't have to look and see does this person
Speaker 1: belong Do they look like Aunt Carol? Do they look
Speaker 1: like Uncle Joe? Yes? Or no? Right, you't gotta ask
Speaker 1: those questions because there's for ninety nine dollars and sometimes less,
Speaker 1: you can get a commercial DNA test.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like ancestry dot com twenty.
Speaker 1: Three and meters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my heritage family tree DNA and delicious goes on
Speaker 2: and on and on.
Speaker 1: Hey, people get these results back, and I think the
Speaker 1: family re unions this year are gonna be spicy, y'all
Speaker 1: eating chicken a corporate and they're like uncle Billy, it says,
Speaker 1: I'm not this. Hey, nobody told them they want. They
Speaker 1: want answers questions that need answers. I don't know how
Speaker 1: people decide like, yes, I want to do a genetic test,
Speaker 1: and then beyond the genetic test, the people that put
Speaker 1: them into those genealogy databases to find more people like
Speaker 1: I understand the thirst for that information, but I'm also like,
Speaker 1: aren't you a little bit nervous about that?
Speaker 2: I'm nervous about all that stuff, which is why I
Speaker 2: have not done that. Yeah, I feel confidence that I
Speaker 2: know for the most part where I'm from, and so
Speaker 2: I just I'm just sticking with that. If it's something different,
Speaker 2: it's gonna have to be different.
Speaker 1: I'm from North Carolina, and I think that's good enough
Speaker 1: for me. I'm from North Carolina and it's human and
Speaker 1: that's all I need to end to. Bugs are the
Speaker 1: size of your head.
Speaker 2: That's all you need to know about North Carolina.
Speaker 1: But you know, that really brings up a good point,
Speaker 1: Like you were saying, I don't really know how it works,
Speaker 1: And somebody asked us about that on our Instagram lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody asked us a question. They said, have y'all done
Speaker 1: like twenty three and meters or ancestry testing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of those commercial genetic testing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they're like, have you done a commercial genetic
Speaker 1: test or direct to consumer genetic test? And what do
Speaker 1: you think about it? Guess what we're answering your question today.
Speaker 2: So today we're talking about genetic.
Speaker 1: Testing, specifically direct to consumer genetic testing and how that
Speaker 1: information is being used. All right, let's get into the recitation.
Speaker 1: What do we know and what do we want to know?
Speaker 2: So there has been a huge boom in the amount
Speaker 2: of people who are doing these genetic tests.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, almost four point five million people did
Speaker 1: direct to consumer genetic testing, and.
Speaker 2: In twenty eighteen that number almost tripled.
Speaker 1: And by the beginning of this year, more than twenty
Speaker 1: six million people have added their DNA to one of
Speaker 1: the main ancestry or health databases. Honestly, it's everywhere. Everybody's
Speaker 1: doing it. I heard somebody who was using these tests
Speaker 1: for dogs. But what do you need to know about
Speaker 1: your dog? Let's think about my dog, Daisy. Oh, I
Speaker 1: love Daisy.
Speaker 2: Daisy is a Chihuahua and she's very chihuaha in, but
Speaker 2: she's part human too. Sometimes I do think Daisy is
Speaker 2: a human. She definitely sleeps under the covers like a
Speaker 2: human with her head on the pillow.
Speaker 1: See, and now you are a person that wants to
Speaker 1: get a DNA kit for your dog, going to get
Speaker 1: a DNA kit. Folks are using these DNA kits to
Speaker 1: not only find out their ancestry, but they're also using
Speaker 1: them to find out if they have any type of
Speaker 1: diseases in their families and any type of genetic things
Speaker 1: that they need to be aware of. Right, So, looking
Speaker 1: at risk profile. You know, do you have this certain
Speaker 1: gene If you do, what does that mean for your
Speaker 1: risk of manifesting a certain disease later?
Speaker 2: So when you get your results back, for most people,
Speaker 2: the buck stops there. They're not doing anything else. Nice
Speaker 2: to know that I'm fourteen percent Scandinavian. But some people
Speaker 2: take it one step further. Some people are using this
Speaker 2: information and putting it into some of these open source
Speaker 2: databases that are separate from the direct consumer companies, but
Speaker 2: they're using them to kind of make a genealogy tree
Speaker 2: or find long lost or distant relatives. So they're looking
Speaker 2: for other people who have genetic profiles that are similar
Speaker 2: to theirs. And in some cases when they do that,
Speaker 2: police are using that information to find the distant relatives
Speaker 2: of yours that have committed crimes, like the Golden State killer.
Speaker 2: That was the cold case that had been unsolved for decades,
Speaker 2: but then the police were able to find a DNA match.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, but also great that they have a suspect
Speaker 1: after all these years. You know, So how do we
Speaker 1: weigh those things? And who, like you said, who's doing
Speaker 1: the weighing? Do the rules change? Are there any rules?
Speaker 2: Right, Now we're going to get into that a little
Speaker 2: later in the show, But first, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things I need to know about these kits. I have
Speaker 2: no idea like how a lot of this stuff works.
Speaker 2: So that's what I want to start the dissection with.
Speaker 2: I want to start with the very very basics.
Speaker 1: So you want to know what genetic information they're looking
Speaker 1: at in these tests?
Speaker 2: No, Like I want to know, like what is DNA,
Speaker 2: what is a chromosome?
Speaker 1: What is a genie?
Speaker 2: And then like how these kits work. How do they
Speaker 2: get all of that information from a bunch of spit.
Speaker 1: So from the spit of to the kidda, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that. My questions are more around kind of information
Speaker 1: and the disclosure of information. So if you have this
Speaker 1: genetic information and not even just information, if you have
Speaker 1: the sample, what are you doing with all that spit?
Speaker 1: Do you use it all in the process when you're
Speaker 1: collecting the DNA? Then when you actually get those test
Speaker 1: results back, does the company keep a copy of it
Speaker 1: as well? Like do you get a copy and then
Speaker 1: they keep a copy or you get a copy and
Speaker 1: they burn it after reading? I have questions about that
Speaker 1: this message will self destruct right right, is it like
Speaker 1: mission impossible? But then I think my other question is,
Speaker 1: even though there are these privacy concerns and there you know,
Speaker 1: for some of these companies they say we do not
Speaker 1: share information with anybody, is there any clause that allows
Speaker 1: that to change. Is it possible that they don't share
Speaker 1: now but they will later in the terms and conditions?
Speaker 1: Because you know, I don't read this though, I don't
Speaker 1: ever roll to the bottom, click the button, clickick.
Speaker 2: Except and go about my life.
Speaker 1: I acknowledge I have read this, but I have not.
Speaker 1: I have not read a single word. So before we
Speaker 1: get to the dissection, we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: What do you guys think about these at home DNA kids.
Speaker 1: Have you done a genetic test?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I did not have not just not interested. I don't
Speaker 1: trust it.
Speaker 2: I don't think you can just swab my spent and
Speaker 2: tell me where my ancestors came from.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't make sense to me. Have you ever
Speaker 1: done any genetic testing before? But maybe somebody did it
Speaker 1: on me, but I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think there's also a little bit of concern that
Speaker 4: I have around data privacy and how data is being
Speaker 4: stored and shared. So that would definitely be something I
Speaker 4: would need to look into if I were to like
Speaker 4: try it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, uh huh yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, could you tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: motivated you to do this.
Speaker 3: I'm from Japan, and in Japan, like there is a
Speaker 3: discussion that you know, how pure Japanese you are. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I was curious about like signing up by myself,
Speaker 3: like if I believe I'm not, so, you know, I
Speaker 3: wanted to find out.
Speaker 2: So let's get into the dissection. And today the dissection
Speaker 2: is going to be a little bit different because we're
Speaker 2: going to tackle the dissection in this lab in two parts.
Speaker 2: For the first half, we're going to be using my
Speaker 2: friend and favorite person as our expert, because Zakiya, she
Speaker 2: is an expert on all things DNA. Your PhD is
Speaker 2: in genetics, right, and so I'm going to draw on
Speaker 2: your expertise to explain a lot of this stuff, no problem.
Speaker 2: And then in the second part, we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking to a lawyer who specializes in forensic science, and
Speaker 2: they can talk more about the bigger questions around the
Speaker 2: information from these kits and how they're used.
Speaker 1: Right, They're going to help us understand some of the ethical, legal,
Speaker 1: and social implications of this.
Speaker 2: Right, So run me through how these commercial kits actually work.
Speaker 2: So first, you send in a bunch of spit with
Speaker 2: DNA in it, right.
Speaker 1: I think one of the common misconceptions is that inherently
Speaker 1: that there's DNA in your spit. What's happening is your
Speaker 1: cheek cells. Your cheeks are constantly shedding, right Ooh, I
Speaker 1: know that seems really gross, little asmr. Your cheeks are
Speaker 1: constantly shedding, and so those cells that are coming off
Speaker 1: of the cheek, the inside of the cheek, those have
Speaker 1: DNA in them. And so what you're doing is getting
Speaker 1: those cells that are in the spit and you're getting
Speaker 1: the DNA out of the cheek cells.
Speaker 2: So let's start with the very basics, because this is
Speaker 2: what I need. Okay, I know DNA, I know chromosome.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling pretty proud.
Speaker 2: Don't get your hopes up. And I know gene. But
Speaker 2: what I don't understand is how those three things interact
Speaker 2: with each other or like, what's the difference. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: I felt some judgment in that.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I think these are great leaps and bounds
Speaker 1: because you used to only tell me that the mitochondria
Speaker 1: was the powerhouse of the cell.
Speaker 2: So it is I remember that from biology.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling good about what you know so far. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, if you know any of those words. I
Speaker 1: think we're off to a good start, right. So if
Speaker 1: we think about our cells, everything in your body is
Speaker 1: made up of a cell, and these cells replicate. The
Speaker 1: way they're able to replicate and the way they're able
Speaker 1: to function is that they have instructions in them, and
Speaker 1: those instructions are stored in the form of DNA. But
Speaker 1: there's so much genetic information, and so in order for
Speaker 1: it to all fit into a cell, it is really condensed.
Speaker 1: It's packed and wound on top of itself. And in
Speaker 1: that formation that DNA that's wound up and really tightly packed,
Speaker 1: those are chromosomes. So chromosomes are tightly wound DNA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 2: And soh how do these things translate into.
Speaker 1: Like TT as you present? Yeah, so this beautiful face.
Speaker 1: So each cell has different areas of the DNA that
Speaker 1: get turned on or turned off. And those areas those
Speaker 1: little pieces of DNA that correlate to like make more
Speaker 1: sugar or do this and that. Those are genes. So
Speaker 1: along the chromosome, right, which is that tightly wound DNA.
Speaker 1: There are regions that encode for special functions for each cell.
Speaker 1: And so even though every cell in your body has
Speaker 1: the same information, they appear differently because different genes are
Speaker 1: turned on and off, so different parts of that chromosome
Speaker 1: are being expressed in let's say a cell that is
Speaker 1: in your gut compared to like a cell this in
Speaker 1: your eyeball.
Speaker 2: This is very complex, but the way that you're explaining
Speaker 2: it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So each cell has the same twenty three chromosomes in it,
Speaker 1: and those chromosomes all have differ different genes on them,
Speaker 1: but the collective term for all twenty three of those
Speaker 1: chromosomes is a genome, okay, And so when you hear
Speaker 1: people mention like, oh, a human genome, they're they're talking
Speaker 1: about all of the chromosomes that person has. And so
Speaker 1: when we talk about the human genome, the human genome
Speaker 1: is just if you are of the species Homo sapien sapiens,
Speaker 1: this is your genome, right, But like bird, a specific bird,
Speaker 1: it has a different genome, so you can't. So that's
Speaker 1: also a thing people have to understand, Like each species
Speaker 1: has its own set genome, so we have a reference
Speaker 1: genome that's come out of a lot of work that
Speaker 1: scientists have done to understand what's on each chromosome. So
Speaker 1: all of our genomes are the same roughly, And I
Speaker 1: think this is something that people don't really realize. If
Speaker 1: you are a human, you share roughly ninety nine point
Speaker 1: nine eight percent of your DNA with other everybody else, Wow,
Speaker 1: there is very little variation. We're not so different. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling really optimistic because that means I share about
Speaker 1: ninety nine point ninety eight percent of by DNA with Beyonce.
Speaker 1: And so I think, you know, when we think about
Speaker 1: these genetic tests, what they're looking at are areas where
Speaker 1: there tends to be variation.
Speaker 2: So that point two percent that's left over, that's the
Speaker 2: variable part.
Speaker 1: And in that.
Speaker 2: Variable part, that's where you have genes that make you
Speaker 2: distinct from someone else. And so they're saying, is there
Speaker 2: somebody else with a similar profile or are there groups
Speaker 2: of people that have similar profiles? And that's how they say, Okay,
Speaker 2: you share ancestry or this percentage of whatever versus you know, thirty.
Speaker 1: Percent of this, And so that's how they're creating these profiles.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's take a break, and when we get back,
Speaker 2: we're bringing in someone who can help us break down
Speaker 2: why this is so important and what you need to
Speaker 2: know before doing one of those kids yourself. We're back,
Speaker 2: and so in the first part of the dissection, Zakia,
Speaker 2: you really laid out the basics of DNA and how
Speaker 2: these kids actually work.
Speaker 1: Right, and so now we're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: that information is being used and to help us, we
Speaker 1: recruited Aaron Murphy.
Speaker 5: I'm Aaron Murphy. I'm a professor at NYU School of Law.
Speaker 5: I'm the author of Inside the Cell, The Dark Side
Speaker 5: of DNA, and I've written and researched DNA issues for
Speaker 5: a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: Now. Aaron's work shines a light on how DNA is
Speaker 1: being used and who is using it.
Speaker 2: A perfect example of this is in the Golden State
Speaker 2: Killer case.
Speaker 1: I read that book and I was not sleeping for weeks. Okay,
Speaker 1: I I think I hear something in the house.
Speaker 2: That you also do that when there is a bug
Speaker 2: in your house.
Speaker 1: Yes, equally scary. You guys have to check out the
Speaker 1: book I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a link in the show notes and
Speaker 1: hit us on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Let's read along, let's read together. Let's read it together.
Speaker 2: Like we'll be like, okay, read up the page whatever.
Speaker 2: It'll be like being back in high school again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, being a book club. I think it'll be really good.
Speaker 2: And folks, some folks wasn't reading the book. But I
Speaker 2: trust that you all will read this book.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Read the book clubs is when folks show up and
Speaker 2: they haven't read what they were supposed to read. And
Speaker 2: then you're like, so, then how are we supposed to
Speaker 2: have a book club?
Speaker 1: Just eat the snacks. Just eat the snacks, and these.
Speaker 2: Are virtual snacks. It costs us nothing, Okay, So let's
Speaker 2: get back to this case.
Speaker 1: So they were there was a string of murders and
Speaker 1: rapes and burglaries in California and that was in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, and the police could not figure it out.
Speaker 2: They did have a DNA sample from one of the
Speaker 2: crime scenes.
Speaker 1: So law enforcement took the Golden State Killers DNA from
Speaker 1: a crime scene and ran it through their database.
Speaker 5: But when they tried to find a match in the
Speaker 5: ordinary criminal justice databases, over time they never found a match.
Speaker 2: So then you fast forward to twenty eighteen and the
Speaker 2: use of these directed consumer DNA kits has completely blown up,
Speaker 2: and there's a growing interest in using these online databases
Speaker 2: to try and make connections to unsolved cold cases using
Speaker 2: genetic material.
Speaker 5: And there's a site in particular called jed match.
Speaker 2: And if you're trying to do your googles, that's ged match.
Speaker 5: And that's a site where people who participate in online
Speaker 5: recreational DNA testing sites like twenty three and meters or ancestry,
Speaker 5: when they do those tests, they usually have to kind
Speaker 5: of stay within the walls of the service. And so
Speaker 5: if you send your genetic information to ancestry dot com
Speaker 5: and you're trying to find relatives and then some relatives
Speaker 5: sends their information to twenty three and meter, you won't
Speaker 5: find each other because you're both in separate consumer commercial databases.
Speaker 5: So a person in Florida kind of invented this idea
Speaker 5: of a site where you could sort of upload what
Speaker 5: you got from one of these commercial testers, and the
Speaker 5: idea would be to allow you to break down those
Speaker 5: walls so that people could find each other a across
Speaker 5: different commercial platforms.
Speaker 1: So law enforcement uses a DNA from the Golden State
Speaker 1: killer crime scene to create a profile, and.
Speaker 2: They did find a distant relative on jed match.
Speaker 5: So when they got back a match, they thought, well,
Speaker 5: if this person is in fact related to our perpetrator,
Speaker 5: they're pretty distantly related. They're like a third cousin or so.
Speaker 5: So they built an entire family tree from that sample.
Speaker 2: And that led them to their suspect, a former police
Speaker 2: officer in California named Joseph James DiAngelo. They got some
Speaker 2: of DiAngelo's DNA and we'll talk about how that could
Speaker 2: have happened in a little bit, and he ultimately proved
Speaker 2: to be a match.
Speaker 1: So let's look at some of the reasons why they
Speaker 1: found a DNA match after all those years and why
Speaker 1: they couldn't find a match back in the day.
Speaker 2: Well, first, it's because there was a wider pool of
Speaker 2: people on jed match. The law enforcement databases police for
Speaker 2: using decades ago only had convicted and arrested people in it.
Speaker 2: Jedmatch is an open source platform where anyone can upload
Speaker 2: their information.
Speaker 1: And the second reason is because the genetic information people
Speaker 1: upload into jed match from their commercial kits is a
Speaker 1: lot more informative. A lot of people assume all DNA
Speaker 1: testing is the same, but it's not.
Speaker 2: Okay, So there are two different types of DNA testing
Speaker 2: that we're going to talk about today, and they're very different.
Speaker 2: There are STRs and SMPS or snips.
Speaker 5: The information you can get from STRs is like what
Speaker 5: you could get off of somebody, learn about somebody by
Speaker 5: looking at their driver's license. The information you get from
Speaker 5: snips is what you could learn about somebody by looking
Speaker 5: at their phone.
Speaker 1: The law enforcement databases used to try to find the
Speaker 1: Golden State killer back in the day, those only really
Speaker 1: had information that was from STR testing. But the commercial
Speaker 1: genetic kits people are using today those are snips.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that analogy Aaron used makes me nervous because
Speaker 2: I don't want people looking at my phone. It's like
Speaker 2: that Drake song, you know, when Drake first came out
Speaker 2: and he had that freestyle. He's like, if you find
Speaker 2: my BlackBerry with the side scroll, sell that to any
Speaker 2: Rappid that I know. That's basically what it is for me.
Speaker 2: You find my phone, you got the keys to the castle.
Speaker 1: So let's start with STRs. Why did legislators decide to
Speaker 1: use STR testing for criminal justice databases.
Speaker 5: One thing to understand is that when forensic DNA typing
Speaker 5: came on the scene, legislators and criminal justice officials made
Speaker 5: this very conscious choice to choose parts of the genome
Speaker 5: that were highly variable, so they're different among people but
Speaker 5: essentially meaningless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they might have had your phone, but it was
Speaker 1: like a rotary phone.
Speaker 5: It was just looking at areas of the genome where
Speaker 5: we know there are these sequences that everyone has, and
Speaker 5: they just repeat different numbers of time and different people.
Speaker 1: Also, with str testing, the range of how far back
Speaker 1: you can find relatives is limited. It really only allows
Speaker 1: you to identify parents or full siblings, but you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't identify a correlation with say, aunts and uncles, and
Speaker 1: definitely not second or third cousins. SNIP testing, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, is very different.
Speaker 5: SNIP testing can get you someone's third cousin. It can
Speaker 5: get you genetic connectedness between people who in our social
Speaker 5: worlds probably don't know they're related. I sometimes like to
Speaker 5: point out that the person who was the link to
Speaker 5: the goal than state killer probably read the newspaper about
Speaker 5: that arrest with the same sense of surprise as everybody else,
Speaker 5: because they probably don't know their third cousin.
Speaker 1: Snips tell you everything. They're saying, this is how many phones,
Speaker 1: this is how many pictures you have, This how many
Speaker 1: selfies you have. This is what you like to look
Speaker 1: at at night. This is what you like to listen
Speaker 1: to before you go to sleep. Like it's telling you everything.
Speaker 2: It's like Spotify, you know how those playlists know your
Speaker 2: exact mood and what you have for breakfast.
Speaker 1: That's what a snip is.
Speaker 5: Snip testing far more implicates privacy than this other form.
Speaker 1: It's a very very.
Speaker 5: Different kind of testing, and I think it's a really
Speaker 5: important difference to understand in judging whether this is a
Speaker 5: method we should use or not.
Speaker 1: And they have several other applications aside from these kids.
Speaker 1: Snips are used in biomedical research and in the pharmaceutical industry.
Speaker 1: One example of the technology that can be developed using
Speaker 1: snip data is Crisper and this is a really popular
Speaker 1: gene editing technology that's been in the news lately.
Speaker 2: So that means that for these commercial testing kits, which
Speaker 2: have SNIP information from all their consumers, that could be
Speaker 2: pretty valuable. Right.
Speaker 5: People assume that the model of the business is one
Speaker 5: that's about commercial kit testing. You know, oh, twenty three
Speaker 5: and meters makes its money from my ninety nine dollars kit,
Speaker 5: but we know that that's not true. In fact, they
Speaker 5: discount those kits to subsidize the real model of the business,
Speaker 5: which is, you know, research, precision medicine, et cetera. What
Speaker 5: they're doing is selling data, genetic data and using genetic
Speaker 5: data for research. That's what makes them money, not your kit.
Speaker 1: This is something that I always tell people. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: might think that you're paying for a service, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you are the product, right like people are selling like
Speaker 1: people say, oh, only pay five dollars. And then I
Speaker 1: got you know, my dad was telling me about an app
Speaker 1: where he could get fifteen cent off for gas for forever,
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, you know why it's so cheap,
Speaker 1: because you are the product they're selling, your information as
Speaker 1: a consumer.
Speaker 5: Just DNA labs alone is like a one billion dollar
Speaker 5: industry if you really put it together, all the different
Speaker 5: applications and research, it's way more than that. And what
Speaker 5: that tells me is there are peopleeople who think this
Speaker 5: is really valuable stuff. Right, you would not have entire
Speaker 5: industries forming around understanding the genome, understanding what we can
Speaker 5: learn from it, understanding how to edit it to improve
Speaker 5: health outcomes, et cetera. If we didn't think those things
Speaker 5: were possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's exciting to learn more about where
Speaker 1: you're from and who you are and how you're related
Speaker 1: to this person or that person. But I think there
Speaker 1: needs to be a little more marketing about the other
Speaker 1: side of the coin, you know, which is the collection
Speaker 1: of biomedical information and how it informs different types of
Speaker 1: decisions and policy and health care. So I think if
Speaker 1: we have to really consider not just like what am
Speaker 1: I getting from this information today, but what else can
Speaker 1: be done with this information later?
Speaker 2: Putting your DNA out there is like when you squeeze
Speaker 2: the toothpaste out of the two. You can't put that
Speaker 2: toothpaste back in.
Speaker 1: Nope, it's not going back.
Speaker 2: Once it's out there is out there. Might as well
Speaker 2: bush your teeth, And.
Speaker 1: That's just assuming that all you can do is brush
Speaker 1: your teeth. We don't know what they're going to do
Speaker 1: with toothpaste in the future.
Speaker 5: We still don't have a firm grip on what exact
Speaker 5: role genomics play, but billions of dollars are being spent
Speaker 5: right now to figure that out, and so I think
Speaker 5: when people think about, well, what's the impact of sharing
Speaker 5: my genetic information, it's really important to remember this is
Speaker 5: incredibly valuable stuff. People really want to know what's in
Speaker 5: the genome and what we can do with it. And
Speaker 5: the decision I'm making today may not be changeable in
Speaker 5: twenty years, thirty years, fifty years, when some of the
Speaker 5: money that's being spent right now actually starts to dividends
Speaker 5: in the form of much more concrete information about genetic
Speaker 5: predispositions and so forth.
Speaker 2: And as we learn with the Golden State killer case,
Speaker 2: access to this information isn't just valuable to commercial genetic
Speaker 2: testing companies, it's also really valuable to the police who
Speaker 2: are using these open source databases to solve cold cases,
Speaker 2: eyes not cases, lukewarm.
Speaker 1: Cases, all of that.
Speaker 2: I just feel like I just found out that I
Speaker 2: own lakefront property in the south of France.
Speaker 1: We're sit on the gold line. We got to protect it,
Speaker 1: that's right. I feel like now that we kind of
Speaker 1: have brought everybody up to speed, we're all thinking about
Speaker 1: how valuable our genetic information is. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system and how DNA is being used
Speaker 1: there I want to know everything, like could police have
Speaker 1: my genetic information? And if they do, when did they
Speaker 1: get it, how did they get it.
Speaker 5: There are a couple different ways that law enforcement got
Speaker 5: DNA now, both visible and invisible. So the most visible
Speaker 5: way that they collect DNA is that if a person's
Speaker 5: been convicted of a crime. In every state there are
Speaker 5: convicted offender DNA registries, and that means that just as
Speaker 5: a byproduct of that conviction, you're required to give your
Speaker 5: DNA to the state and they put that DNA profile
Speaker 5: into a database.
Speaker 1: As for non criminals, sometimes law enforcement will just ask
Speaker 1: people for their DNA to help them find a suspected
Speaker 1: crim and some people are happy to help, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people might feel like they're being coerced. I
Speaker 1: know I would feel that way.
Speaker 5: We've also seen in some places prosecutors using DNA samples
Speaker 5: or DNA profiles as a way to sort of trade
Speaker 5: leniency in their treatment of cases. So they can say,
Speaker 5: you know, I'll drop this drug possession case if you
Speaker 5: give me a DNA sample for the database, or i'll
Speaker 5: mark you know, your charge down if you give me
Speaker 5: a DNA sample for the database. And courts, by and
Speaker 5: large allow that.
Speaker 2: So those are visible ways, and in all those scenarios,
Speaker 2: people know that their DNA is being taken, even if
Speaker 2: they're not happy about it. But there are other ways too.
Speaker 5: Right now, there's really no prohibition on what's called sarptitious sampling,
Speaker 5: and this is the idea that anything you discard that
Speaker 5: has your genetic or biological material on it can be
Speaker 5: seized by law enforcement and type.
Speaker 2: So basically you don't even need to commit a crime
Speaker 2: for police to snag your DNA, and they aren't required
Speaker 2: to report how many samples they have, so they might
Speaker 2: have mine and they might have yours.
Speaker 1: We don't know. And it's especially complicated because we leave
Speaker 1: a trail of DNA around us everywhere we go. You
Speaker 1: touch a doorknob, you're leaving fingerprints behind. You didn't exfoliate,
Speaker 1: you didn't wash your legs, well, you're shedding legs, skin
Speaker 1: cells as you walk.
Speaker 2: There, you go, your DNA is right there there, coming
Speaker 2: right for the picking.
Speaker 5: And I think that's one of the concerns again about
Speaker 5: this genetic genealogy, is that it strongly incentivizes this kind
Speaker 5: of syruptitious collecting because as you're building out these family trees,
Speaker 5: if you come to a stumbling block, one solution might
Speaker 5: be just to test even if you know this is
Speaker 5: not the actual suspect of the perpetrator. One way to
Speaker 5: overcome that stumbling block might be just to collect surreptitious
Speaker 5: samples from the kind of last person you had to
Speaker 5: try to get closer to your actual perpetrator.
Speaker 1: So when you pair an open source database with the
Speaker 1: ability to surreptitiously or secretly collect DNA samples, suddenly police
Speaker 1: have way more avenues to find potential criminals. That could
Speaker 1: have been how they got the DNA sample for the
Speaker 1: Golden State killer suspect. Maybe they followed him into a
Speaker 1: jama juice or picked up a used cut a straw,
Speaker 1: used straw or something like that, and now he's in jail.
Speaker 2: And because commercial genetic testing and these open source genealogy
Speaker 2: databases have become so popular so quickly, the courts are
Speaker 2: kind of racing to catch up. There aren't a lot
Speaker 2: of protections currently in place.
Speaker 1: A good precedent, though, is smartphones.
Speaker 5: So just to give one example, there's a big Supreme
Speaker 5: Court case about searching cell phones. And we used to
Speaker 5: have this general idea that if police like arrest you
Speaker 5: or lawfully sees you. They can kind of seize your stuff,
Speaker 5: they can look, they can pat you down. And it
Speaker 5: was largely motivated by like a safety rationale. You know,
Speaker 5: if you're gonna seize someone, you might want to make
Speaker 5: sure they don't have a weapon in their bag or
Speaker 5: what have you. And so the Supreme Court in that
Speaker 5: case said, no, you know, they have to have a
Speaker 5: reason to search your cell phone and permission from a
Speaker 5: court to do it.
Speaker 1: And that was a point that came up in the
Speaker 1: Jesse Smolllett case, like people were saying, why do and
Speaker 1: he turned over his phone and show police, you know
Speaker 1: who he was communicating with, but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in the phone. We didn't really have a law
Speaker 1: for that. Like we have to develop these laws as
Speaker 1: we learn more about these technologies.
Speaker 5: And that kind of I think understanding of the differences
Speaker 5: that technology can make and the ways in which privacy
Speaker 5: can be much more compromised now because of that technology
Speaker 5: than in the past is what we need for DNA.
Speaker 5: We just haven't had it yet, a sort of recogning
Speaker 5: with the biological cell, not just the mobile cell.
Speaker 1: And while there are some regulations in place for how
Speaker 1: police can use their own law enforcement databases. There are
Speaker 1: little to no regulations in place for how information from
Speaker 1: the open source databases can be used.
Speaker 5: These commercial companies in general have some you know, protections
Speaker 5: for privacy, et cetera, and how they're going to use
Speaker 5: the data in place, but it's very voluntary and it's
Speaker 5: it's really not that binding to the extent that it
Speaker 5: might conceivably be binding. You can't really imagine much by
Speaker 5: way of enforcement of those agreements.
Speaker 1: People always shock when I tell them, like, I know,
Speaker 1: I haven't done one of these tests, but it's because
Speaker 1: of the scary factor, right of the unknown of what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in the future. But if there were
Speaker 1: laws in place to protect your genetic information, it might
Speaker 1: be different. Because it is interesting, right, people should feel
Speaker 1: free to go out and get these tests done to
Speaker 1: learn more about themselves and you know, their ancestry. They
Speaker 1: shouldn't be worried about.
Speaker 2: Their DNA being used in ways that they aren't aware
Speaker 2: of or haven't approved of.
Speaker 5: I don't think you should have to choose between those
Speaker 5: really legitimate reasons to want to do this and genetic
Speaker 5: transparency for the rest of your life, you know, I
Speaker 5: think you should be able to participate in this kind
Speaker 5: of you know, recreational genetics without not just bartering away
Speaker 5: your genetic privacy, but the genetic privacy of your children,
Speaker 5: their children, all your relatives that you know and all
Speaker 5: the relatives you don't know.
Speaker 1: You need to tell your auntie that's out here telling
Speaker 1: everybody to do a DNA kit, say you know, I
Speaker 1: love you, but here are some things we should be
Speaker 1: thinking about. Right, did you read the fine print before
Speaker 1: you send in all that spit? I think it's important
Speaker 1: for people to start to start knowing because I can
Speaker 1: really see there being a turning tide where we're going
Speaker 1: from T shirts they have the family names on them
Speaker 1: to DNA kids with the family name on them as
Speaker 1: your party favorite for the family reunion. Let's just think
Speaker 1: it through before we do that.
Speaker 2: So that was a lot of information to take in,
Speaker 2: not just a lot of information, a lot of scary information.
Speaker 1: And the point is not to scare, right, but to
Speaker 1: raise awareness. I think that's what we really want to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you feel like you understand now how all these
Speaker 1: things go together?
Speaker 2: I definitely understand a lot more and I feel more informed.
Speaker 2: Like if somebody were to say, oh, do you want
Speaker 2: to do this ancestry test, that I would be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: let me read a lot more about whatever company it
Speaker 2: is who I'm planning on submitting saliva too.
Speaker 1: I think it's important. I think one of the major
Speaker 1: takeaways is that not all companies are created equal, and
Speaker 1: those terms and conditions do vary. So I guess we
Speaker 1: got to start looking at that. Yeah, and then even
Speaker 1: after you get your results, what you do next really
Speaker 1: can have a major impact, right, not just on you,
Speaker 1: but everybody else in your family.
Speaker 2: And you have to think that way because it's way
Speaker 2: bigger than you. Just like when you get your results
Speaker 2: back and you realize, oh, I have all of this
Speaker 2: family from all these different places. It is bigger than you,
Speaker 2: and you should like really hone in on that fact
Speaker 2: is that this is affecting way more than just yourself.
Speaker 1: I've just been thinking about the collection of DNA and
Speaker 1: how you get added to a database, like you know,
Speaker 1: we just briefly mentioned, you know, law enforcement might ask
Speaker 1: people for their DNA to get them off, like you
Speaker 1: don't get this so that in exchange for a lower
Speaker 1: a lighter sentence for something. It could be something that
Speaker 1: you didn't even do so if I've really been thinking
Speaker 1: about this episode in the context of when they see us,
Speaker 1: which just came out, and I just think about those
Speaker 1: boys in that room and being alone, being nervous, being scared.
Speaker 1: If they say we want to swab, you want to
Speaker 1: get your DNA, You're gonna probably say yeah, right.
Speaker 2: Because you think if you say no, then it's like,
Speaker 2: does that mean that they're gonna think that I'm trying
Speaker 2: to hide something that are guilty or something that I
Speaker 2: didn't do.
Speaker 1: And that's just it's just not the case.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure that there are going to be some
Speaker 2: people who are thinking, well, don't we want to catch
Speaker 2: like people who commit crimes, like we should all be
Speaker 2: giving up our DNA for that. But just because of
Speaker 2: a DNA match does not mean that you are automatically guilty.
Speaker 2: Aaron told us a story about a man who was
Speaker 2: in an ambulance and later on that day, another person
Speaker 2: was in that ambulance, a victim of a crime, and
Speaker 2: they swabbed that victim for DNA, and the man who
Speaker 2: was previously in that ambulance, his DNA was on that person.
Speaker 1: I think they arrested him, and so I think there's
Speaker 1: that component of it, that there's the on the one hand,
Speaker 1: we know that when there's always when there's a DNA match,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that someone is the perpetrator of a crime.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, is that the collection of
Speaker 1: DNA for the purposes of figuring out or excluding people
Speaker 1: from crimes doesn't mean that's the only use of that information.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the terrible part. It doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: It doesn't stop there. It's not like, Okay, I'm here
Speaker 1: to help you with this one case and the buck
Speaker 1: stops here. No. Now, I can take your DNA and
Speaker 1: I can do a familial search when there's something else
Speaker 1: that happens. And I don't think that people are aware
Speaker 1: of how this one small action ripples through for them forever, right,
Speaker 1: and not just affects them, but affects the people that
Speaker 1: they know and love, and even distant relatives who they
Speaker 1: might not know or love.
Speaker 2: Right, and then their children and your children children's children.
Speaker 1: So people you can't even make a decision about, depending
Speaker 1: on where you are in life.
Speaker 2: People who don't even exist right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wow, that's really real. For more on today's episode,
Speaker 1: check out our cheat sheet and show notes at Dope
Speaker 1: Labs podcasts dot com.
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Speaker 1: your podcast special thanks to Erin Murphy, our guests for
Speaker 1: today's episode. You can learn more about her work and
Speaker 1: find a link to her book in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Jenny Rattle at MAAST. Mixing and sound
Speaker 1: design by Hannes Brown.
Speaker 2: Original theme music by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura.
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Speaker 1: and Mega Owned Media Group, and is executive produced by
Speaker 1: us T. T. Shadia and Zakiah Wattley. So basically, all
Speaker 1: the chromosomes in ourselves are just mixing matches of pieces
Speaker 1: of DNA that we get from our parents.
Speaker 2: So it's like I have my mother's smile for my
Speaker 2: father's teeth.
Speaker 1: I think that's quite an oversimplification, but for illustrative purposes,
Speaker 1: I will allow it