Sizing Up the Family Gene Pool Curious about our family's history, my siblings want to send samples of their DNA to a company that is building a genealogy database. My fear is that the information will be used for other, scarier purposes, distributed to other agencies or sold. That could forever compromise us and our common descendants. I don't want my siblings to proceed. What are the ethics of this situation? Shared assets are the subject of more ethical dilemmas than this column could ever publish, and things get only more complicated when it comes to shared family assets. But shared genetic assets pose some of the most confounding questions of all. Consider a family trust: 10 siblings might each get a 10 percent vote. But when it comes to the genes those siblings have in common - and what, if anything, they can learn about them - everyone has a 100 percent vote. There are few conventions to guide that kind of democracy. So before engaging your siblings on whether such testing is ethical and who gets the right to decide, you might start with a simpler question: is genetic testing even worthwhile? A Government Accountability Office investigation into so-called direct-to-consumer genetic testing found inaccurate results and exaggerated claims about how much those results could really tell you. One expert declared the testing so inaccurate that, when it came to medical inquiry, "the most accurate way for these companies to predict disease risks would be for them to charge consumers $500 for DNA and family-medical-history information, throw out the DNA and then make predictions based solely on the family-history information." As for the privacy issue, your concern is well founded. Many of these companies do use customers" data for medical research or commercial applications, or they sell it to third parties whose interests you might never know. Legally they can't do that without your consent, but the fine print on those consent forms goes by so quickly that it can be hard to follow. According to David Magnus, a Stanford University ethicist who studies issues related to genetic testing, studies confirm that most customers can't recall what information they agreed to withhold or release. And once it's gone, there's no telling where it might land. If you carry genetic risk factors for Alzheimer's disease, would you want to know? Would you want your boss to know? Unlikely. Magnus said, "Educate the family on the limits of the testing, the lack of oversight that guarantees these tests are accurate and the importance of the fine print, and hope that on that basis the family decides not to engage in testing with a company that's planning to keep or use the information." That might work. But if it doesn't, there's probably nothing else you can do. Your siblings should consider how their actions affect you, but ultimately their genes are their own, however strong the family resemblance. In the most recent installment of Armchair Ethicist, hundreds of readers went to the magazine's 6th Floor blog to weigh in on a daughter's plaintive question: What does she owe her father - whose white-collar crimes devastated his victims and destroyed his family - now that he is out of jail and, along with his wife, destitute and frail? Instead of offering pat formulas for what children owe parents (everything! nothing!), the most useful answers gave the daughter a framework through which to draw her own conclusions, based on her values. Some asked her to consider how helpingher parents might benefit her. Queenbee from Maine said, "Mercy does more for the giver than the receiver." Others suggested the long view. "Unless you believe that the sum total of your parents" relationship to you is contained in their criminal behavior, you need to decide what impact that behavior should have on the relationship remaining: whatever obligation you feel flows from that answer should guide your behavior," Ed, from Washington, D.C., said. Rob in New Hampshire wrote: "Take the victims out of your equation. They will not benefit or suffer more as a result of any choices you make now. Does that make it easier? Certainly the daughter has no obligation to restore her parents to their prior standard of living. But however justifiably angry she is, I can't see any argument for leaving them to go hungry or homeless or to die from poor medical care. Ideally, no one should leave a stranger in those circumstances, though we all do; people who have shown us kindness certainly deserve better. And I especially don't understand why some people advocated dumping her parents on the social safety net. Her father has done enough to hurt society. If she can lessen any further toll, she should, if only to offset any benefits she unwittingly derived from his crimes. The daughter herself said she was moved by a simple question - how would you want to be treated if you were the one getting out of jail? - and by a comment from one reader. I admire it, too, because it takes her feelings and values as the basis for ethical decision-making, and so I end with the thoughts of Set from North Carolina: "What would you regret more: helping them or not? Then follow your gut. That doesn't mean you sacrifice yourself to their needs. You have children, and they should not suffer, and you should not give so much that you hurt yourself. However, you have a sense that you should do something, or else you would not ask the question. If nothing else, encourage your parents to help themselves.