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In 1984, a genealogy geek named John Sittner published The Source, a book meant to unearth and analyze never-before-seen records that genealogists could use to put together family histories with unprecedented detail. Several years later, he founded Ancestry magazine to teach people how they could use public archives and technology -- which, back then, meant CD-ROMS and primitive websites and search engines -- to build out their family trees.
Sittner sold the company long ago, but three decades after it began, Ancestry.com -- the $1.6 billion Internet company that his magazine evolved into -- is poised to become one of the most unlikely, yet powerful, scientific tools in the world. For about three years, it’s been collecting and analyzing genetic information through a service called AncestryDNA, and in the process, quietly asking consumers if they’d be willing to share their data with Ancestry for research. To date, it’s banked more than 800,000 samples from customers all over the world, rivaling the database of Google-backed genetics-analysis company 23andMe, which boasts about 900,000 samples. And now, armed with mountains of health...