Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are

A deeply reported look at the rise of home genetic testing and the seismic shock it has had on individual lives

You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send it away to a labsomewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where yourancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the reportcould reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense ofidentity. Soon a lark becomes an obsession, an incessant desire to findanswers to questions at the core of your being, like “Who am I?” and“Where did I come from?” Welcome to the age of home genetic testing.

In The Lost Family, journalistLibby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vastsocial experiment with little understanding of the ramifications.Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA,and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all whiletracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentlessmethodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern geneticdetective story.

The Lost Family delves into the manylives that have been irrevocably changed by home DNA tests—a technologythat represents the end of family secrets. There are the adoptees who’veused the tests to find their birth parents; donor-conceived adults whosuddenly discover they have more than fifty siblings; hundreds ofthousands of Americans who discover their fathers aren’t biologicallyrelated to them, a phenomenon so common it is known as a “non-paternityevent”; and individuals who are left to grapple with their conceptionsof race and ethnicity when their true ancestral histories arediscovered. Throughout these accounts, Copeland explores the impulsetoward genetic essentialism and raises the question of how much ourgenes should get to tell us about who we are. With more than thirtymillion people having undergone home DNA testing, the answer to thatquestion is more important than ever.

Gripping and masterfully told, The Lost Family is a spectacular book on a big, timely subject.

Weight: 352g
Dimension: 143 x 221 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781419747939