Good evening, all. My name is Anthony Martin, and as it states in the title of this post, I am the founder and president of SellMyDNA.com. My good friends at Candy Smokes have graciously given me the opportunity to address you tonight, and I would like to begin with a topic that’s near and dear to my heart — people who don’t believe that SellMyDNA.com is legitimate. 

Usually a person of my stature in the scientific community does not stoop to answering customer service emails, but I pride myself on being a man of the people, and I regularly communicate with the common folk who try to sell us their DNA. Most of the correspondence is fairly positive, once we get beyond the language gap that naturally occurs between a member of the intelligentsia (myself, obviously) and your typical blue-collar worker (the people who most often try to sell us their DNA).

Sometimes, however, I’m bothered to discover that one of our prospective donors does not believe that New Line Genetics is a real company, or that SellMyDNA.com will really give them at least $5,000 for their DNA sample. I would like to provide you an example of such a message, and a taste of the way I deal with such verbal diarrhea.

First, his message to me:

HAH!

Just as I thaught, its a SCAM to extract email and other info from people and send them crap they don’t need. NICE FISHING TRICK.

I don’t want nor need any emails from you, and the names not Alfred if you cared to read the email.

bye!

Next, my response to him:

It’s not a scam to extract your email, my dear reader. If all I wanted to do was find email addresses to spam, I could find a lot easier way than building two in-depth websites, I assure you.

As for your “NICE FISHING TRICK” comment, there is no way for me to collect any valuable personal information from you (social security number, credit card number, etc), unless you foolishly (and unprompted, I might add) included that information in the email you initiated to me. The collection of valuable personal data in an underhanded manner – that’s what real phishing is. And I’ve never done that. I do, however, spell “phishing” correctly, which is something you should probably try. Any outsider who read your email would probably have assumed that I showed you how to tie an Offshore Swivel Knot, and then ferried you over to the weed patch where the largemouth bass like to hang out.

Yes I did care to read and answer your email, sir, and if you had responded with any questions on the current state of medical genetics, or wanted to debate the ethics of any of the scenarios presented on SellMyDNA.com, I would have engaged you fully. However, if you just want to scream “SCAM” to anyone who will listen (which is no one), I’ll just have to say goodnight.

Cheers.

I hope you people can see that I do not suffer fools gladly. Let this message be a lesson to you, and be aware that if you send me an asinine email like the one above, you will be dealt with most severely. That is all.