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Around Town: Gene studies, questions, and the 1%

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Last week, the Great Genealogy Adventure took an unexpected twist.

Twelve years ago, we found Cousin Dan on Ancestry.Com. Being new to the whole genealogy thing, we immediately invited Dan and his brother to our home, sight unseen. Dan was a cousin on the elusive Torres side of the family.

They say you should be cautious about people you meet on the Internet, but meeting Dan turned out to be the best thing ever. Through Dan, we met 350 living descendants of my husband’s second great-grandfather. At the last reunion, there were dancers, artists, lawyers and veterans from every branch of service. That, plus amazing food. We heard about the Hacienda days, and how my husband was descended from cowboys and cowgirls.

A few months ago, Dan told us he’d found some new cousins.

“How?” I asked.

“One of us took the DNA test,” he replied.

There are a lot of concerns about DNA privacy. Even if the consent forms to a research project state that your analyzed genome will be kept private, chances are that it will be disclosed.

Personally, I don’t mind. I’m old enough not to worry about gene discrimination, crime identification or running for office. (Wouldn’t you want to see the candidates’ genetic psychological screen from www.promethease.com? There are 189 pages of interesting facts, such as an increased resistance to the bubonic plague. But that would invade their privacy.)

In an era where refrigerators can monitor your conversations, privacy is a big concern. The biggest risk is to our children and grandchildren. Last year, state Assemblyman Mike Gatto proposed legislation to protect the privacy of 16 million Californians whose frozen blood samples were stored in a biobank. For the last 30 years, they’ve been storing blood, taken from heel pricks, from almost every baby born in California as part of a project to screen for health disorders. According to a Feb. 1, 2015, article in the Los Angeles Times, California keeps the frozen samples indefinitely, unlike other states.

Our family genealogy team has come up with a plan. In an effort to preserve the privacy of genetic data, we’ve asked other relatives to submit their DNA for testing on Ancestry.Com, always under someone else’s account and under pseudonyms. The hard part is remembering all the passwords.

The prospects were so fascinating that I sent in my DNA sample too. Here’s what I found: I am 99% what we all know I am, and 1% something else, something so unexpected, but totally illuminating.

The 1% is Viking.

Ancestry calls it “Scandinavian,” but that’s an obvious misnomer when it’s only 1%. If your grandmother comes from Denmark and your grandfather from France, you’d expect to see 50% Scandinavian and a mixture of other stuff. But when you are 99% pure, with no other northern European roots, the facts are obvious.

I feel bad for my 50th great-grandmother.

As for the health screen, I spent $5 at www.promethease.com and got a lengthy report. One gene predisposes me to weight gain, but another makes me thinner. I am likely to be resistant to the Black Death. I am unlikely to be addicted to opiates. There was a bunch of information about how I metabolize different prescription pharmaceuticals, none of which are prescribed for me.

My trainer, Muscle Mike Padgett, put the results into perspective. He told me that our health is not only determined by our genes, but by our lifestyle. Then he had me “hop on the treadmill.”

Most of the time, I listen to Padgett, at least 99% of the time. The only exception is when I’m forced to channel my inner Warrior Queen. You can spot her right away. She’s the one with the knife.

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ANITA SUSAN BRENNER is a longtime La Cañada Flintridge resident and an attorney with Law Offices of Torres and Brenner in Pasadena. Contact her at anitasusan.brenner@yahoo.com. Follow her on Instagram @realanitabrenner, Facebook and on Twitter @anitabrenner.

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