His DNA Promise Doesn’t Deliver
Generations of black Americans have longed to reconnect with their African roots, only to be frustrated by the improbability of knowing where their ancestors lived on the vast continent. So when Rick Kittles, a young and ambitious geneticist at Howard University, proposed using DNA testing to pinpoint the exact region or tribe of their forebears, hundreds of African Americans contacted his lab with expectations that a $300 blood test could link them to their long-lost lineage.
Like a dream too good to be true, such hopes remain impossible to grasp.
Kittles and Howard University are in the embarrassing position of backtracking on their African Ancestry Project, which was scheduled to debut with large-scale genetic tests this summer. They also are scrambling to find explanations for government funders and others in the scientific community about how the university could have promoted so ambitious a proposal without adequate supervision.
A glitzy Web site featuring images of African culture and urging prospective black American blood sample donors “to find out more about ourselves by examining our genetic makeup and developing a genetic fingerprint” has been dismantled. Kittles and other Howard officials connected with the African Ancestry Project declined repeated requests for interviews with The Times.
While some scientists predict they may soon achieve just what Kittles advertised on the Web site, many experts familiar with DNA research say the technology is too new to market to the public.
“Someone has taken someone else’s half-baked cake and started selling slices to the public,” said Michael Blakey, director of the African Burial Ground Project, a federally funded effort to study slave remains found in New York City.
Blakey, who teaches anthropology at Howard and Brown universities, said it is “eminently possible” to do what Kittles is proposing. In fact, he said, Kittles got the idea from their collaboration on the New York project, where a broad group of scientists is attempting to match the DNA extracted from skeletal remains found eight years ago at an urban construction site with genetic samples of Africans dispersed across the continent and the Caribbean. Additionally, the group is building a computer database of DNA samples from Native Americans, Europeans and other ethnic groups that might have commingled with African slaves.
Kittles, a molecular biologist, was involved in the New York project, supervising the DNA lab work involved in linking the remains to Africa. But he left the project late last year after a dispute with Blakey, according to researchers who worked on the project. He returned to Howard to pursue his own research on DNA and prostate cancer mortality among black American men, taking with him some of the data he had been working on at the New York project.
Officials at the National Human Genome Research Institute--a division of the National Institutes of Health and one of the leading groups involved in mapping human DNA--awarded Kittles and Howard University a $50,000 grant for equipment and other tools needed for the genetic research associated with the African Burial Ground Project.
But those officials said they became alarmed when they learned Kittles had set up a Web site to market a service to inform black Americans about their roots in Africa. “We had some questions if it was a commercial venture,” said Cathy Yarbrough, director of communications for the NIH genome research group. “We’re not involved in that.”
Yarbrough said NIH officials were given assurances from Howard officials--verbally and in writing--that none of the grant money was used in Kittles’ project. “We’re satisfied about that,” she said, expressing surprise when told Kittles no longer was working on the New York project. “We are in contact with Howard about that.”
Blakey is concerned that Kittles’ work could be confused with his own and could frighten away pending funding from the U.S. General Services Administration and Congress for the African Burial Project. “This controversy might give the GSA fuel to interrupt our work,” he said.
Since 1993, GSA has given Blakey’s team $5.1 million for its work and promised--but not yet delivered--another $5 million to complete its work.
“Hopefully, the problems with this research are solvable, but we’re more than a few years away from seeing it. And even then, it’s unlikely to be absolute identification,” Blakey said. “In the end, what you’re going to get is an estimate or a probability of affiliation with a general region or population.”
Before Blakey and other critics raised questions, Kittles seemed eager to speak to reporters about his work. In several news reports over the past six months, he has described his work in triumphant tones. “This will definitely contribute a lot to understanding the history of African Americans,” he told the Boston Globe last month.
Although genetic tracing--linking current generations to their long-departed and far-flung ancestors--sounds like something out of an episode of “Star Trek,” the science supporting it is plausible and close to being reality. What’s more, the individuals or companies that can package and sell credible proof of human ancestry stand to reap great wealth.
Researchers say mitochondrial DNA, which is the part of human cells that generate energy, is passed without alteration from mother to child, and the Y chromosome is passed from father to son. By carefully studying the pairs of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes, scientists are able to locate markers in these genes that are common to certain population groups, based on race or geographic origin, giving them clues to what part of the world from which a person’s lineage might have originated.
Kittles has told reporters he has more than 2,000 DNA samples from about 40 population groups across western Africa, where scholars believe the Atlantic slave trade originated. But more work is needed to develop a larger database of genetic samples from a wider variety of African peoples, say genetic scientists familiar with the research.
Once collected and cataloged, the African DNA database could be compared with specimens extracted from black Americans. By this summer, Kittles had predicted on his Web site, Howard University would be ready to offer the public the service for about $300, the estimated cost of the blood test.
When perfected, the DNA studies hold out the hope that humans will be able to reconstruct their ancestral ties, reaching beyond the grave and generations to learn more about their biological histories. Many African American families, which were severed from their ties to Africa during slavery, are unable to trace their ancestry in the United States beyond a generation or two. For them, the lure of learning more about their heritage is irresistible.
“If you’re an African American, all you know is you come from somewhere in the vast continent of Africa,” said Sam Ford, a television reporter in Washington and the first to publicize Kittles’ work. “I had heard about it and I knew [black] people would be interested, so suggested he do the test on me and I would do a story on what he found.”
Ford, 46, already had traced some of his ancestry to slaves owned by Native Americans in Oklahoma, but Kittles told him more than that. “He said, based on the samples he already had collected, my father’s people had ties to Nigeria and there were genetic markers that suggested my mother’s people came from Somalia, Ethiopia, Niger and Guinea,” Ford said, adding that that seemed to jibe with his own research suggesting he was descended from the East African Fulani tribes. “This wasn’t clear-cut proof of anything, but having covered trials where DNA evidence is used in the courts, it was acceptable for me. It was the best evidence we got of where my family might have come from.”
After Ford’s broadcast last November, Kittles’ office at Howard University was flooded with requests from reporters around the world and from black Americans seeking their own roots to Africa. Apparently anticipating a future flood of interest, Kittles set up his Web site and prepared to go into business.
Some of the black Americans who were tested early on were upset to learn that they weren’t solely descended from the African motherland. In fact, Kittles told one reporter that results for about 30% of the people he tests show that paternal ancestry goes to Europe--most likely because they are offspring of slave women who were raped.
One man came to Kittles’ office bedecked in colorful African garb and boasting of his proud heritage as a Mandinka warrior, like those he had seen on the TV miniseries “Roots.”
“I did the test,” Kittles told the Boston Globe, “and said, ‘Man, your Y chromosomes go back to Germany.’ ”
