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23&Me
If you've had even an inkling of interest in exploring your ancestry via a DNA kit, Amazon Prime Day is your ticket to not only satiating that desire but to doing so at a discount. Through July 13, 23&Me's Health and Ancestry service kit is discounted down to $99 — which is a full 50% off its normal price (and one of the best deals we've ever seen on this kit).
DNA kits work by using a swabbed sample of your saliva to chart out a user's family tree. While this aspect alone is enlightening, there are other useful health benefits such as information about your genetic risk for disease (such as Parkinson's or type 2 diabetes). 23&Me also offers users the ability to opt-in to a program that can connect them with other known family members.
Considering the fact this is all offered via the 23&Me Health and Ancestry service kit for $200, being able to pick one up for less than $100 is an incredible deal.
Yes, they're totally safe. Most DNA kits just ask for a small saliva sample or cheek swab and provide the necessary tools for obtaining that sample. So long as you follow the instructions correctly, it's not likely a DNA kit will actually harm you during the sample-taking process.
Some companies do anonymously sell your genetic analysis to places like pharmaceutical companies, so if you're not comfortable with that data potentially being sold or available to be sold, it's not recommended you use a DNA kit.
However, there are a number of other ways for your DNA to be accessible and/or sold, so just because you may opt to not use one of these kits doesn't mean your DNA data isn't available somewhere. See here for more info on privacy concerns in our guide to the best DNA kits.
Yes, 23&Me shares its data with a pharmaceutical company called GlaxoSmithKline and has also sold the rights to a drug it developed based on its gathered DNA kit health data to Almirall, a Spanish pharmaceutical company.
Anyone looking to explore their family tree, know more about their ethnic makeup, or are curious about what their genetic traits look like are perfect candidates to use a DNA kit. Any amount of curiosity about one's own family or family history is a great reason to give one a try.
If you think you'd be surprised (or even traumatized) by a shock family finding, it's likely not wise to use a DNA kit. The same goes for anyone who wants to use it to purely assess their genetic risks for disease. DNA kits aren't comprehensive enough to cover everything present in your DNA, so they shouldn't be used as a complete snapshot of your genetic disease risk.
