How many times, Kristen, do you think you have taken a DNA test?

I think that I have quit counting.

That's Kristen V Brown, who covers health for the Atlantic.

I've taken 23 knees tests at least three times.

Ancestry, I've taken all the weird little startup ones that used to be around,

you know, like the one that you fit in a tube and then they printed you a

scarf with your DNA on it. I don't know if you remember that one. From like 2016, 2017 era.

At the height of the home DNA test era, 16-2017 era.

At the height of the home DNA test era, she even tested her cat.

One of Kristen's human tests caused some mild chaos.

Kristen's grandfather was Syrian, but the test concluded that she had

Italian ancestry instead. My aunt, who's a big genealogy enthusiast, she

assumed that it meant someone had lied or there was some family secret but

this was like you know many years ago and at that point there just weren't as

many Arab people in the reference databases,

so they just kind of picked the next closest thing, which is in Italy, you know,

it's kind of over there. So it created a minor family job on.

But other than that, the test didn't tell her all that much.

She had a good chance of having blue eyes, which she has,

a greater than average chance of Celiac disease, which she doesn't.

One thing Kristen does think about is where the data from all those tests went,

and just how much of it is lurking somewhere in a company database or even on the internet.

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