DNA testing: is it worth it?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are lots of reasons you may want to take a DNA test. Perhaps you want to find out where in the world your DNA comes from or connect to relatives. But people don’t always know what they’re getting themselves into and some make shocking discoveries about their families. We speak to Rebekah Drumsta from the NPE Friends Fellowship, a charity which helps people come to terms with finding out that one of their parents isn’t a biological relative. DNA tests also raise questions about healthcare. We hear from Nick in Kentucky, who thinks his life was saved after a DNA test spotted a hard to diagnose condition. So should they be used alongside traditional healthcare services such as the NHS? Kathy Hibbs from 23andMe tells us how the company would like to work with the NHS. And Adam Rutherford, who is a geneticist and author of ‘The Book of Humans: A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War and the Evolution of Us’, tells us why he’s sceptical about the idea. Producers: Duncan Barber and Harriet Noble. Mixed by Nicolas Raufast. Editor: John Shields.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:04.6	Hello, I'm Tina Dehealey.
0:08.8	You're listening to Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,
0:11.5	a space to ask one big question about one big story.
0:14.7	Today is DNA testing worth it.
0:27.0	Looking at our DNA testing worth it. Looking at our DNA can tell us about a lot. Our ancestry, our bodies, our health, those
0:40.0	tiny molecules floating around inside us contain many of the secrets of why we are
0:45.6	who we are and what the future holds for us. Millions of people around the world have
0:50.8	already taken online DNA tests in order to try and find out
0:54.5	some of those secrets including producer Duncan. I took one last year it's quite
1:00.1	simple you order it online and then they send you a small kit and it
1:04.0	looks like it will be really simple because there's just like this small tube
1:06.4	that you have to spit into and then send back to them to get your results.
1:09.6	But actually I don't know if you've ever tried spitting into a tube lots it actually takes a lot more effort than you'd think.
1:15.6	The answer to that is no, I haven't.
1:17.2	Well I plan to just do it on the way to the post office.
1:19.2	I was in a bit of a rush to get it sent back in time on a Saturday.
1:22.2	Hang on. Walking down the street, we were playing to just spit into...
1:25.0	I was through a park, I was in a park, it wasn't that busy.
1:28.0	And yeah, the plan was to kind of discreetly, quickly spit in the tube and then, you know, rush on to the post office, send it off, there you go.
1:35.0	But I had to end up kind of going behind a bush and, you know, it takes a lot of effort, put it that way.
1:40.0	Okay, you painted a picture.
	...

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