The Lost Family - Libby Copeland

 

Since 2015, after attending a genealogy cruise where I learned about genetic genealogy, the field has become a passion of mine. I even started a monthly study group in my home, which is now seven years strong. Being an avid reader, I’ve sought out books on the topic over the years. This book revisits much of what I’ve learned and offers a fantastic summary of the field’s evolution up to 2020. As a bonus, I found it at a genealogy book sale!

Libby Copeland tells the fascinating story of Alice, a retired, meticulous genealogist who took one of the earliest consumer DNA tests with 23andMe in 2012. That test revealed a discrepancy in her family history, setting her on a journey to unravel the mystery. Alice’s quest serves as a compelling backdrop to the broader story of consumer DNA testing. Copeland interviews industry pioneers, including Bennett Greenspan of FamilyTreeDNA, scientists from 23andMe, Ancestry’s DNA team, and Yaniv Erlich from MyHeritage, to trace the field’s origins and progress.

I was delighted to encounter familiar names, such as Colleen Fitzpatrick, Barbara Rae-Venter, CeCe Moore, and other early women practitioners who were instrumental in launching this discipline.

The author masterfully weaves together Alice’s personal search with the larger narrative of scientific advancements, all while addressing critical issues like privacy, security, the rights of biological parents, and the ethical use of DNA data.

I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking an overview of the origins of DNA-based family research and the resolution of a compelling mystery!

Quotes/Notes

[mentioned] Alondra Nelson, Columbia University sociologist and author of The Social Life of DNA.

[mentioned] Nelkin and Lindee authors of The DNA Mystique

"as people we are the sum of other people's choices"

"We are empowering consumers, patients, family members, caregivers to obtain all kinds of information that we couldn't provide before..."

[mentioned] Diane Harman-Hoog class is an author of The Methodology, the DNAAdoption steps for working cases. 

[mentioned] Veil Maternity Hospitals for unwed mothers in Missouri and Pennsylvania

"concept of Georgetown University Law professor Paul Ohm that we are all at the mercy of massive troves of data that businesses collect and keep on us...the 'data base of ruin'...our genomes have become them."

Published: 2020 Read: November 2024  Genre: Science

Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe

Sub-title: The Secret History of the Sackler Empire

This is the story of the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma and manufacturers of Oxycontin.  Derived from the poppy flower, opium has been the scourge of people trying to escape pain for centuries.  It's powerful effects lead to addiction and a guaranteed market for suppliers.  Purdu

e made billions of dollars on the drug, inventing the aggressive marketing to physicians and extravagant bonuses to its sales force, never acknowledging its impact on the epidemic it created in the U.S. The author is an investigative journalist who spent several years researching and documenting the rise of the Sackler fortune.

His book tracks the three brothers born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents in the early 1900's, through their rise in New York society and around the world, becoming known for their philanthropy while keeping vague about the source of their fortune.   It was an inside view of the attitudes, lifestyle and values of a very wealthy, privileged family living their own different view of reality.  

There's detailed documentation of the inside correspondence of the company, the micro management carried out by the family members and the lawsuits brought against them.  

It was depressing and appalling to see the lives destroyed and the total lack of any acceptance of responsibility or si accountability.  

Quotes: 

[They made an agreement] "that was known as a tontine, an antique investment instrument ..in which a number of participants band together in what is effectively a mortality lottery."

 "Upton Sinclair wrote that a man has difficulty understanding something if his salary depends on him not understanding"

Published:  2021  Read: November 2024  Genre: History

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

 

Earth is threatened by an interstellar virus that's eating the sun, threatening human extinction.  So they harness the virus to propel a spaceship and find an antidote.  And the main character, a grade school science teacher turned astronaut with amnesia, has to figure out how to save the world when he wakes up light years away.  

Implausible? Exactly.  Escape that I need right now? Yes.  

I've enjoyed lots of science fiction being a big Asimov fan, and a reader of Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Douglas Adams, among others.  This book was a diversion with a quirky main character who can miraculously fix anything that goes wrong on the ship, explaining the problems and fixes for a good dose of science and math along the way.  He's aiming for the source of the antidote and meets a fellow traveler...I won't spoil it but it's a bro tale of saving their parts of the universe.  Fun read.

Published:  2021  Read: November 2024  Genre: Science Fiction

Quotes:

"Light is a funny thing.  It's wavelength defines what it can and can't interact with.  Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally non existent to that photon.  That's why there's a mesh over the window of a microwave.  The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through.  But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely.  So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off."

[Rocky is the alien the narrator encounters in space] "Rocky speaks with musical chords.  While it's very difficult to make a computer turn human speech into texts, it is very easy to make a computer identify musical notes and find them in a table."