Radio 4's Jenny Kleeman talks DNA journey: "We have a US president who will talk about good genes"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

When Jenny Kleeman took a DNA test, she waited for the results with trepidation. “It was really nerve-racking,” she recalls, which is understandable when you consider that the award-winning journalist took it for her Radio 4 podcast The Gift and that she already knew how they can unearth shocking secrets: babies switched at birth; IVF fraud; and even people born of incest.

While the title The Gift ostensibly refers to people gifting at-home DNA tests from the likes of 23andMe and Ancestry to friends and relatives, it’s also a gift for Kleeman in the ever more incredible stories each series brings – the third starts this week with one so jaw-droppingly rare, it will make headline news (I’m sworn to secrecy over its details).

Kleeman is astonished at the reaction to the series. “I thought it’d be a cautionary tale… but it’s amazed me the number of people who’ve chosen to do DNA tests because they’ve listened to The Gift. I feel incredibly grateful that anything I’ve made could be a part of these extraordinary human stories.”

What’s equally astonishing is that no one in the series ever regrets taking a DNA test, no matter how dark the revelations, and Kleeman speaks regularly with many of them. “I take it very seriously that they’ve trusted me with their story, and I will be there for them as long as they want me. These stories are so personal and sometimes it can feel a bit like a therapy session. But I’m always very clear that I’m a journalist and this is going out on the radio.”

It’s that journalist who sees the bigger picture beyond the human interest stories, the social history of babies for sale in 1950s Canada, the Wild West of early, unregulated IVF clinics and the increase in the use of donor sperm. But the knottiest story is how we seem quite happy to share the most intimate personal data online. When asked whether the rise of at-home DNA testing could lead to a dark, dystopian future, Kleeman is blunt, “I think we’re already in that dystopian future.”

She knows well the possible dangers as, after taking her test in 2023, 23andMe was later hacked and the personal data of Ashkenazi Jews (Kleeman’s heritage) sold on the dark web. Yet it’s not necessarily hacking that has her most concerned but who legitimately owns this data. When 23andMe went bankrupt in March 2025, it was bought by a medical research institute that now owns the DNA of millions.

Kleeman says she has no idea who could own her genetic code in 50 years’ time and what they’d use it for. “We shouldn’t kid ourselves that any protections we have in place now are going to protect us for ever. We need to adjust our expectations of privacy. We also need to be realistic about the fact we’ve made the decision to digitise the most private things, our medical histories and genetic code, because of the answers that the digital world can give us. There are unintended consequences and we need to be wise to them.”

There’s one other aspect of the tests we need to be wise to. “You’ve got to take them with a pinch of salt when it comes to ethnicity. They can’t tell you who you are, culturally or ethnically, but can tell you who your parents are.” This has provided Kleeman with a fair amount of amusement. “I like nothing more than going on white supremacist forums. It’s very funny – ‘Guys, I’ve just got my results back Jewish, but that’s OK, isn’t it?’ ”

Confused racists may amuse her, but Kleeman knows they’re a clear sign of a worrying trend. “We have a US president who will talk about good genes,” she says, “and we’re living in quite dark times where the clarity apparently provided by these tests can be quite seductive, which is why I’m keen to debunk that side of them.”

Another side of the at-home tests that really needs debunking is what they can tell you about your propensity for certain diseases. Kleeman explains, “NHS doctors say there have been huge problems caused by these tests, of people coming in and saying, ‘You need to give me a mastectomy, you need to give me whatever,’ when they don’t.”

Whether any of these concerns will deter people from taking at-home DNA tests or giving them as gifts to their nearest and dearest is unlikely however, because while she describes the idea of a DNA test as “Marmite” – not for everyone – Kleeman notes, “We find ourselves eternally fascinating”. She, however, is not. There were no surprises lurking in her results, she says relieved, “I was very happy to be boring.”

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