SCOOP: Largest Cryobank in the U.S. to Offer Ancestry Testing
Sharon Kochlany and Vanessa Colimorio's four-year-old twin girls had a classic school assignment recently: make a family tree. They drew themselves and their one-year-old brother branching off from their moms, with aunts, uncles, and grandparents forking off to the sides.
The recently-gained sovereignty of queer families stands to be lost if a consumer DNA test brings a stranger's identity out of the woodwork.
What you don't see in the invisible space between Kochlany and Colimorio, however, is the sperm donor they used to conceive all three children.
To look at a family tree like this is to see in its purest form that kinship can supersede biology—the boundaries of where this family starts and stops are clear to everyone in it, in spite of a third party's genetic involvement. This kind of self-definition has always been synonymous with LGBTQ families, especially those that rely on donor gametes (sperm or eggs) to exist.
But the world around them has changed quite suddenly: The recent consumer DNA testing boom has made it more complicated than ever for families built through reproductive technology—openly, not secretively—to maintain the strong sense of autonomy and privacy that can be crucial for their emotional security. Prospective parents and cryobanks are now mulling how best to bring a new generation of donor-conceived people into this world in a way that leaves open the choice to know more about their ancestry without obliterating an equally important choice: the right not to know about biological relatives.
For queer parents who have long fought for social acceptance, having a biological relationship to their children has been revolutionary, and using an unknown donor as a means to this end especially so. Getting help from a friend often comes with the expectation that the friend will also have social involvement in the family, which some people are comfortable with, but being able to access sperm from an unknown donor—which queer parents have only been able to openly do since the early 1980s—grants them the reproductive autonomy to create families seemingly on their own. That recently-gained sovereignty stands to be lost if a consumer DNA test brings a stranger's identity out of the woodwork.
At the same time, it's natural for donor-conceived people to want to know more about where they come from ethnically, even if they don't want to know the identity of their donor. As a donor-conceived person myself, I know my donor's self-reported ethnicity, but have often wondered how accurate it is.
Opening the Pandora's box of a consumer DNA test as a way to find out has always felt profoundly unappealing to me, however. Many people have accidentally learned they're donor-conceived by unwittingly using these tools, but I already know that about myself going in, and subsequently know I'll be connected to a large web of people whose existence I'm not interested in learning about. In addition to possibly identifying my anonymous donor, his family could also show up, along with any donor-siblings—other people with whom I share a donor. My single lesbian mom is enough for me, and the trade off to learn more about my ethnic ancestry has never seemed worth it.
In 1992, when I was born, no one was planning for how consumer DNA tests might upend or illuminate one's sense of self. But the donor community has always had to stay nimble with balancing privacy concerns and psychological well-being, so it should come as no surprise that figuring out how to do so in 2020 includes finding a way to offer ancestry insight while circumventing consumer DNA tests.
A New Paradigm
This is the rationale behind unprecedented industry news that LeapsMag can exclusively break: Within the next few weeks, California Cryobank, the largest cryobank in the country, will begin offering genetically-verified ancestry information on the free public part of every donor's anonymous profile in its database, something no other cryobanks yet offer (an exact launch date was not available at the time of publication). Currently, California Cryobank's donor profiles include a short self-reported list that might merely say, "Ancestry: German, Lebanese, Scottish."
The new information will be a report in pie chart form that details exactly what percentages of a donor's DNA come from up to 26 ethnicities—it's analogous to, but on a smaller scale than, the format offered by consumer DNA testing companies, and uses the same base technology that looks for single nucleotide polymorphisms in DNA that are associated with specific ethnicities. But crucially, because the donor takes the DNA test through California Cryobank, not a consumer-facing service, the information is not connected in a network to anyone else's DNA test. It's also taken before any offspring exist so there's no chance of revealing a donor-conceived person's identity this way.
Later, when a donor-conceived person is born, grows up, and wants information about their ethnicity from the donor side, all they need is their donor's anonymous ID number to look it up. The donor-conceived person never takes a genetic test, and therefore also can't accidentally find donor siblings this way. People who want to be connected to donor siblings can use a sibling registry where other people who want to be found share donor ID numbers and look for matches (this is something that's been available for decades, and remains so).
"With genetic testing, you have no control over who reaches out to you, and at what point in your life."
California Cryobank will require all new donors to consent to this extra level of genetic testing, setting a new standard for what information prospective parents and donor-conceived people can expect to have. In the immediate, this information will be most useful for prospective parents looking for donors with specific backgrounds, possibly ones similar to their own.
It's a solution that was actually hiding in plain sight. Two years ago, California Cryobank's partner Sema4, the company handling the genetic carrier testing that's used to screen for heritable diseases, started analyzing ethnic data in its samples. That extra information was being collected because it can help calculate a more accurate assessment of genetic risks that run in certain populations—like Ashkenazi Jews and Tay Sachs disease—than relying on oral family histories. Shortly after a plan to start collecting these extra data, Jamie Shamonki, chief medical officer of California Cryobank, realized the companies would be sitting on a goldmine for a different reason.
"I didn't want to use one of these genetic testing companies like Ancestry to accomplish this," says Shamonki. "The whole thing we're trying to accomplish is also privacy."
Consumer-facing DNA testing companies are not HIPAA compliant (whereas Sema4, which isn't direct-to-consumer, is HIPAA compliant), which means there are no legal privacy protections covering people who add their DNA to these databases. Although some companies, like 23andMe, allow users to opt-out of being connected with genetic relatives, the language can be confusing to navigate, requires a high level of knowledge and self-advocacy on the user's part, and, as an opt-out system, is not set up to protect the user from unwanted information by default; many unwittingly walk right into such information as a result.
Additionally, because consumer-facing DNA testing companies operate outside the legal purview that applies to other health care entities, like hospitals, even a person who does opt-out of being linked to genetic relatives is not protected in perpetuity from being re-identified in the future by a change in company policy. The safest option for people with privacy concerns is to stay out of these databases altogether.
For California Cryobank, the new information about donor heritage won't retroactively be added to older profiles in the system, so donor-conceived people who already exist won't benefit from the ancestry tool, but it'll be the new standard going forward. The company has about 500 available donors right now, many of which have been in their registry for a while; about 100 of those donors, all new, will have this ancestry data on their profiles.
Shamonki says it has taken about two years to get to the point of publicly including ancestry information on a donor's profile because it takes about nine months of medical and psychological screening for a donor to go from walking through the door to being added to their registry. The company wanted to wait to launch until it could offer this information for a significant number of donors. As more new donors come online under the new protocol, the number with ancestry information on their profiles will go up.
For Parents: An Unexpected Complication
While this change will no doubt be welcome progress for LGBTQ families contemplating parenthood, it'll never be possible to put this entire new order back in the box. What are such families who already have donor-conceived children losing in today's world of widespread consumer genetic testing?
Kochlany and Colimorio's twins aren't themselves much older than the moment at-home DNA testing really started to take off. They were born in 2015, and two years later the industry saw its most significant spike. By now, more than 26 million people's DNA is in databases like 23andMe and Ancestry; as a result, it's estimated that within a year, 90 percent of Americans of European descent will be identifiable through these consumer databases, by way of genetic third cousins, even if they didn't want to be found and never took the test themselves. This was the principle behind solving the Golden State Killer cold case.
The waning of privacy through consumer DNA testing fundamentally clashes with the priorities of the cyrobank industry, which has long sought to protect the privacy of donor-conceived people, even as open identification became standard. Since the 1980s, donors have been able to allow their identity to be released to any offspring who is at least 18 and wants the information. Lesbian moms pushed for this option early on so their children—who would obviously know they couldn't possibly be the biological product of both parents—would never feel cut off from the chance to know more about themselves. But importantly, the openness is not a two-way street: the donors can't ever ask for the identities of their offspring. It's the latter that consumer DNA testing really puts at stake.
"23andMe basically created the possibility that there will be donors who will have contact with their donor-conceived children, and that's not something that I think the donor community is comfortable with," says I. Glenn Cohen, director of Harvard Law School's Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics. "That's about the donor's autonomy, not the rearing parents' autonomy, or the donor-conceived child's autonomy."
Kochlany and Colimorio have an open identification donor and fully support their children reaching out to California Cryobank to get more information about him if they want to when they're 18, but having a singular name revealed isn't the same thing as having contact, nor is it the same thing as revealing a web of dozens of extended genetic relations. Their concern now is that if their kids participate in genetic testing, a stranger—someone they're careful to refer to as only "the donor" and never "dad"—will reach out to the children to begin some kind of relationship. They know other people who are contemplating giving their children DNA tests, and feel staunchly that it wouldn't be right for their family.
"With genetic testing, you have no control over who reaches out to you, and at what point in your life," Kochlany says. "[People] reaching out and trying to say, 'Hey I know who your dad is' throws a curveball. It's like, 'Wait, I never thought I had a dad.' It might put insecurities in their minds."
"We want them to have the opportunity to choose whether or not they want to reach out," Colimorio adds.
Kochlany says that when their twins are old enough to start asking questions, she and Colimorio plan to frame it like this: "The donor was kind of like a technology that helped us make you a person, and make sure that you exist," she says, role playing a conversation with their kids. "But it's not necessarily that you're looking to this person [for] support or love, or because you're missing a piece."
It's a line in the sand that's present even for couples still far off from conceiving. When Mallory Schwartz, a film and TV producer in Los Angeles, and Lauren Pietra, a marriage and family therapy associate (and Shamonki's step-daughter), talk about getting married someday, it's a package deal with talking about how they'll approach having kids. They feel there are too many variables and choices to make around family planning as a same-sex couple these days to not have those conversations simultaneously. Consumer DNA databases are already on their minds.
"It frustrates me that the DNA databases are just totally unregulated," says Schwartz. "I hope they are by the time we do this. I think everyone deserves a right to privacy when making your family [using a sperm donor]."
"I wouldn't want to create a world where people who are donor-conceived feel like they can't participate in this technology because they're trying to shut out [other] information."
On the prospect of having a donor relation pop up non-consensually for a future child, Pietra says, "I don't like it. It would be really disappointing if the child didn't want [contact], and unfortunately they're on the receiving end."
You can see how important preserving the right to keep this door closed is when you look at what's going on at The Sperm Bank of California. This pioneering cryobank was the first in the world to openly serve LGBTQ people and single women, and also the first to offer the open identification option when it opened in 1982, but not as many people are asking for their donor's identity as expected.
"We're finding a third of young people are coming forward for their donor's identity," says Alice Ruby, executive director. "We thought it would be a higher number." Viewed the other way, two-thirds of the donor-conceived people who could ethically get their donor's identity through The Sperm Bank of California are not asking the cryobank for it.
Ruby says that part of what historically made an open identification program appealing, rather than invasive or nerve-wracking, is how rigidly it's always been formatted around mutual consent, and protects against surprises for all parties. Those [donor-conceived people] who wanted more information were never barred from it, while those who wanted to remain in the dark could. No one group's wish eclipsed the other's. The potential breakdown of a system built around consent, expectations, and respect for privacy is why unregulated consumer DNA testing is most concerning to her as a path for connecting with genetic relatives.
For the last few decades in cryobanks around the world, the largest cohort of people seeking out donor sperm has been lesbian couples, followed by single women. For infertile heterosexual couples, the smallest client demographic, Ruby says donor sperm offers a solution to a medical problem, but in contrast, it historically "provided the ability for [lesbian] couples and single moms to have some reproductive autonomy." Yes, it was still a solution to a biological problem, but it was also a solution to a social one.
The Sperm Bank of California updated its registration forms to include language urging parents, donor-conceived people, and donors not to use consumer DNA tests, and to go through the cryobank if they, understandably, want to learn more about who they're connected to. But truthfully, there's not much else cryobanks can do to protect clients on any side of the donor transaction from surprise contact right now—especially not from relatives of the donor who may not even know someone in their family has donated sperm.
A Tricky Position
Personally, I've known I was donor-conceived from day one. It has never been a source of confusion, angst, or curiosity, and in fact has never loomed particularly large for me in any way. I see it merely as a type of reproductive technology—on par with in vitro fertilization—that enabled me to exist, and, now that I do exist, is irrelevant. Being confronted with my donor's identity or any donor siblings would make this fact of my conception bigger than I need it to be, as an adult with a full-blown identity derived from all of my other life experiences. But I still wonder about the minutiae of my ethnicity in much the same way as anyone else who wonders, and feel there's no safe way for me to find out without relinquishing some of my existential independence.
The author and her mom in spring of 1998.
"People obviously want to participate in 23andMe and Ancestry because they're interested in knowing more about themselves," says Shamonki. "I wouldn't want to create a world where people who are donor-conceived feel like they can't participate in this technology because they're trying to shut out [other] information."
After all, it was the allure of that exact conceit—knowing more about oneself—that seemed to magnetically draw in millions of people to these tools in the first place. It's an experience that clearly taps into a population-wide psychic need, even—perhaps especially—if one's origins are a mystery.
This past April, an alleged serial rapist and murderer, who had remained unidentified for over 40 years, was located by comparing a crime scene DNA profile to a public genetic genealogy database designed to identify biological relatives and reconstruct family trees. The so-called "Golden State Killer" had not placed his own profile in the database.
Forensic use of genetic genealogy data is possible thanks to widening public participation in direct-to-consumer recreational genetic testing.
Instead, a number of his distant genetic cousins had, resulting in partial matches between themselves and the forensic profile. Investigators then traced the shared heritage of the relatives to great-great-great-grandparents and using these connections, as well as other public records, narrowed their search to just a handful of individuals, one of whom was found to be an exact genetic match to the crime scene sample.
Forensic use of genetic genealogy data is possible thanks to widening public participation in direct-to-consumer recreational genetic testing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains a national forensic genetic database (which currently contains over 16 million unique profiles, over-representing individuals of non-European ancestry); each profile holds genetic information from only 13 to 20 variable gene regions, just enough to identify a suspect. However, since this database and related forensic databases were established, the nature of genetic profiling has significantly changed: direct-to-consumer genetic tests routinely use whole genome scans involving simultaneous analysis of hundreds of thousands of variants.
With such comprehensive genetic information, it becomes possible to discern more distant genetic relatives. Thus, even though public DNA collections are smaller than most law enforcement databases, the potential to connect a crime scene sample to biological relatives is enhanced. The successful use of one genealogy database (GEDMatch) in the GSK case demonstrates the power of the approach, so much so that the genetic profiles of over 100 similar cold cases are now being run through the same resource. Indeed, in the two months since the GSK case was first reported, 5 other cold cases have been solved using similar methods.
Autonomy in the Genomic Age
While few would disagree with the importance of finally bringing to justice those who commit serious violent offenses, this new forensic genetic application has sparked broad discussion of privacy-related and ethical concerns. Before, the main genetic databases accessible to the police were those containing the profiles of accused or convicted criminals, but now the DNA of many more "innocent bystanders," across multiple generations, are in play.
The genetic services that provide a venue for data sharing typically warn participants that their information can be used for purposes beyond those they intend, but there is no legal prohibition on the use of crowd-sourced public collections for forensic investigation. Some services, such as GEDMatch, now explicitly welcome possible law enforcement use.
The decisions of individuals to contribute their own genetic information inadvertently exposes many others across their family tree.
The implication is that consumers must choose for themselves whether they are willing to bring their genetic information into the public sphere. Many have no problem doing so, seeing value in law enforcement access to such data. But the decisions of individuals to contribute their own genetic information inadvertently exposes many others across their family tree who may not be aware of or interested in their genetic relationships going public.
As one well-known statistical geneticist who predicted forensic uses of public genetic data noted: "You are a beacon who illuminates 300 people around you." By the same token, 300 people, most of whom you do not know and have probably never met, can illuminate your genetic information; indeed a recent analysis has suggested that most in the U.S. are identifiable in this way. There is nothing that you can do about it, no way to opt out. Thus, police interaction with such databases must be addressed as a public policy issue, not left to the informed consent of individual consumers.
When Consent Will Not Suffice
For those concerned by the broader implications of such practices, the simplest solution might be to discourage open access sharing of detailed genetic information. But let's say that we are willing to continue to allow those with an interest in genealogy to make their data readily searchable. What safeguards should we implement to ensure that the family members who don't want to opt in, or who don't have the ability to make that choice, remain unharmed? Their autonomy counts, too.
We might consider regulation similar to the kind that limit law enforcement use of forensic genetic databases of convicted and arrested individuals. For example, in California, familial searches can only be performed using the database of convicted individuals in cases of serious crimes with public safety implications where all other investigatory methods have been exhausted, and where single-source high-quality DNA is available for analysis. Further, California policy separates the genealogical investigative team from local detectives, so as to minimize the impact of incidental findings (such as unexpected non-paternity).
Importantly, the individual apprehended was not the first, or even second, but the third person subjected to enhanced police scrutiny.
No such regulations currently govern law enforcement searches of public genealogical databases, and we know relatively little about the specifics of the GSK investigation. We do not know the methods used to infer genetic relationships, or their likelihood of mistakenly suggesting a relationship where none exists. Nor do we know the level of genetic identity considered relevant for subsequent follow-up. It is also unclear how law enforcement investigators combined the genetic information they received with other public records data. Together, this leaves room for an unknown degree of investigation into an unknown number of individuals.
Why This Matters
What has been revealed is that the GSK search resulted in the identification of 10 to 20 potential distant genetic relatives, which led to the investigation of 25 different family trees, 24 of which did not contain the alleged serial rapist and murderer. While some sources described a pool of 100 possible male suspects identified from this exercise, others imply that the total number of relatives encompassed by the investigation was far larger. One account, for example, suggests that there were roughly 1000 family members in just the one branch of the genealogy that included the alleged perpetrator. Importantly, the individual apprehended was not the first, or even second, but the third person subjected to enhanced police scrutiny: reports describe at least two false leads, including one where a warrant was issued to obtain a DNA sample.
These details, many of which only came to light after intense press coverage, raise a host of concerns about the methods employed and the degree to which they exposed otherwise innocent individuals to harms associated with unjustified privacy intrusions. Only with greater transparency and oversight will we be able to ensure that the interests of people curious about their family tree do not unfairly impinge on those of their mostly law-abiding near and distant genetic relatives.
Eric Kandel, 88, is a living legend. A specialist in the neurobiology of learning and memory, he received a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on the physiological basis of memory storage. Kandel is the Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and Co-Director of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University, where he has taught and conducted research for 44 years.
"If you walk two or three miles a day, you will release sufficient osteocalcin from your bones to combat non-Alzheimer's age-related memory loss."
And he's still going strong. Leapsmag Editor-in-Chief Kira Peikoff recently caught up with Dr. Kandel about his latest research, his advice for fellow seniors, and his opinions on some of the biggest challenges in neuroscience today.
What are working on these days?
I'm working on three problems: one is age-related memory loss, the second is post-traumatic stress disorder, and the third is the beholder's share: how a viewer responds to works of art. The beholder's share is a term that Alois Riegl created. He said there are two shares to a painting: the painter creates it, but it's not meaningful until somebody responds to it: the viewer, the beholder.
That's fascinating. As far as age-related memory loss, what are you learning in that area?
I'm learning that there are two forms of age-related memory loss. One is Alzheimer's disease, which we've known about for a long time. But the second is a more benign form which I call just age-related memory loss, which begins actually somewhat earlier and has a very different anatomical locus in the brain. It is caused by a different anatomical defect and responds to different therapeutic measures. It critically involves an area in the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus and it responds to a hormone released by bone called osteocalcin.
It therefore seems likely that one very effective way of combatting age-related memory loss is walking. If you walk two or three miles a day, you are likely to release sufficient osteocalcin from your bones to combat non-Alzheimer's age-related memory loss. In collaboration with Gerard Karsenty at Columbia, my lab at Columbia has been exploring this over the last year and a half.
Have you published anything about this yet?
We are just getting ready to do so.
"I think at the moment we should stick with trying to just reverse abnormalities."
Another question I have is about brain-computer interfaces to help cure disease or even provide cognitive enhancements. What do you think of companies like Kernel and Neuralink that are trying to push this new technology?
I think if it works it would be very nice. We have to see some direct evidence first, but it's certainly an encouraging approach. I think there are a number of directions we could take. The one I think at the moment is most profitable is to try to use the brain as it is and try to enhance it, restore it, refurbish it, make it function better from its age-related condition.
You mean, without some kind of machine interface?
Without necessarily introducing anything from the outside world. Although I have no objection whatsoever to introducing ancillary aids if they're beneficial and not harmful.
Do you have any opinion on whether neuroscience and technology should aim to provide an enhancement to the brain or just return it to baseline and cure disease?
I would be perfectly satisfied if we just cured diseases. I think at the moment we should stick with trying to just reverse abnormalities, but certainly … having the capability of becoming more intelligent, more attentive, capable of remembering things better than normal, that would be nice.
What do you think is the most important challenge facing the field of neuroscience today?
It's hard to say. I think the biology of consciousness is one fantastic problem. Trying to understand and successfully reverse some of the abnormalities of the brain, like age-related memory loss, schizophrenia, depression, manic depressive illness would be wonderful.
To be able to reverse memory loss, to allow people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s to live free and independent lives, is a major challenge for brain science.
Absolutely. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our readers about your research or the field more broadly?
I'd emphasize that brain science is a relatively young discipline but it's moving ahead in a very responsible and a very effective fashion, making progress in a number of areas, and is clearly sensitive to, and responsive to, the demands of the social situation. Right now, number one, the population is aging dramatically. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 50, and now the average life expectancy is 78 for men, and 82 for women.
So people are living longer and therefore are having age-related diseases, including memory loss. To be able to reverse it, to allow people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s to live free and independent lives, is a major challenge for brain science in both its basic and its clinically applied fashion. I think this is very important and serious effort should be put into this.
Kira Peikoff was the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org from 2017 to 2021. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young sons. Follow her on Twitter @KiraPeikoff.