Hey Ken - just a further note on the genealogy aspect (not health):

A lot of people (SO MANY PEOPLE) ... think that the DNA tests offered by Ancestry and 23andMe are the end all be all ..

Those are autosomal tests .. they find cousins .. but they don't go very far back .. for example for 5th cousins .. only 15% of all samples are going to show enough common DNA to match .. and at those levels you run the risk of simply matching others by chance.

But there are two other main types of DNA tests: Y-DNA and mtDNA tests.

Y-DNA is for men only and traces the paternal line. father to son .. It uses markers. It doesn't carry any of the health information that everyone wants to protect... and it can go back 25 generations ...

MtDNA is for women only and traces the maternal line .. mother to daughter .. its very similar to Y-DNA...

For both Y and mt DNA testing - you can join a surname project .. where people that have tested list their names .. and are grouped according to their DNA - which means that you are all related .. even if distantly ..

For example - the Russell surname project is here:
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/russell

And you can see the Y-DNA results of those that have tested here:
https://www.familytreedna.com/publi...rame=ycolorized

Doing a test would put you in one of those subgroups.

Generally FamilyTreeDNA is the best for doing Y-DNA or mTDNA tests .. although there are other testing facilities - they have the largest databases and memberships.


Its kind of funny the way we pass our surnames down based on the father .. If we followed the genetic method then sons would carry their fathers surnames and daughters would carry their mother's surnames .. then we would have male and female surnames .. and no more names like John Smith-Allen-Rose