Genetics:
The Illusive Gold Standard in Genetic Ancestry Testing
Sandra Soo-Jin Lee,1,*
Deborah A. Bolnick,2
Troy Duster,3,4
Pilar Ossorio,5
Kimberly TallBear6
Genetic ancestry testing is being applied in areas as diverse as forensics, genealogical research, immigration control, and biomedical research (1–3). Use of ancestry as a potential risk factor for disease is entrenched in clinical decision-making (4), so it is not surprising that techniques to determine genetic ancestry are increasingly deployed to identify genetic variants associated with disease and drug response (5). Recently, direct-to-consumer (DTC) personal genomics companies have used ancestry information to calculate individual risk profiles for a range of diseases and traits.
1 Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University Medical School, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
2 Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
3 Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA.
4 Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
5 University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
6 Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
* Author for correspondence. E-mail: sandra.lee{at}stanford.edu
