Experts: Genetic testing of racial purity is dangerous nonsense

The Czech company Genomac International (Genomac.cz), the leading domestic and European genetic research center and provider of genetic testing in the field of genetic genealogy and human ancestry, has joined the declaration of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) condemning a case of the abuse of genetics for “testing racial purity”. The full ESHG declaration is online at https://www.eshg.org/13.0.html .

The case occurred in 2010 in Hungary, where a privately-owned genetic diagnostics laboratory performed a DNA identification test for a Hungarian MP and then issued a confirmation that he was of neither Jewish nor Romani ancestry. The eminent scientific journal Nature has now drawn attention to the case.

“We consider the interpretation of the tests of identification markers (heretofore used only for analysis in criminal investigations) to ‘verify racial purity’ not only to be sheer nonsense from a scientific perspective, but also, in today’s era of the tabloidization of most media outlets, to be a very dangerous precedent which could harm genetics as a scientific discipline,” said the General Director of Genomac, RNDr. Marek Minárik, Ph.D.

RNDr. Lucie Benešová, Ph.D., Director for Research and Services at Genomac, said: “For many years we have been pointing out that privately-owned and publicly-owned genetics laboratories should uphold elementary principles of ethics, both in the areas of performing, promoting and publicizing genetic testing, and in the area of interpreting test results. We presented our first draft of an ethical codex for genetic testing to the professional world in 2005.”