Warren’s use of DNA test indicates lack of sensitivity, UB geneticist says

“I was personally dismayed when I heard she had done this.”

That was the first response UB professor James N. Jarvis had when he learned that Sen. Elizabeth Warren had taken a DNA test, presumably to provide evidence that she is of Native American descent.

Jarvis, who is of Akwesasne Mohawk ancestry, is a professor of pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB. He is the former chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Native American Child Health, and has worked on American Indian and Alaska native child health issues for more than 30 years. 

“This is exactly the kind of thing that tribes have been trying to discourage, as it impinges on their sovereignty,” he says of Warren’s use of the DNA test. “It’s up to the tribe to say who is a member and who isn’t.”

He notes the fact that Warren had specifically said the DNA test proves she has some Cherokee ancestry was disturbing because, as a statement from the tribe pointed out, DNA testing cannot identify individuals as members of tribes.

As a geneticist, Jarvis says the reliability of DNA testing is also uncertain, especially where Native American ancestry is concerned.

“I don’t know how many Native American specimens are in any of these databases, and if they are there, I’m not sure that those specimens are being used legitimately. I don’t think any tribe would permit people to come onto their territory to say, ‘Can we collect some of your DNA for ancestry.com?’ We don’t know the circumstances under which those specimens were collected and was there tribal input.”

He says the fact that Warren went ahead with the DNA test revealed a lack of understanding of the complex issues around Native American ancestry and DNA testing. “The fact that she did it was almost prima facie evidence that she isn’t very connected culturally to how delicate an issue is the use of DNA from Native Americans,” he says.

Jarvis conducts research at UB’s Clinical and Translational Research Center and sees patients at UBMD Pediatrics and John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital. His research focuses, in part, on why rheumatic diseases are so common and severe in indigenous American children, especially the role of epigenetic factors from historical traumas and cultural dislocation that may affect how these diseases are expressed in indigenous children.