I'm annoyed at the presumption that I, as a customer, was not aware or on-board with what 23andMe is doing. I did. I'm happy to be part of this. I don't care that someone is making money because of it. I'm just glad that biomedical research to save lives is happening. Why is it a bad thing?<p>And as a side benefit, through this system I got to meet my second cousin and tell her what my mother remembers about her now-passed-on grandmother (that literally happened last night and I'm still excited about it).<p>I am a bit nervous about some of the 'we found the criminal by searching the company's DNA database' stuff. I think some regulation around that is needed. And perhaps 23andMe needs to make it more obvious to customers that they will do this research using the DNA.<p>But as an informed consumer, I was happy to become a customer and participant in this fascinating system.
It's strange how Anne Wojcicki's company has done more for science than Theranos ever did yet most have never heard of her. Even when you exclude the scandal Elizabeth Holmes got herself into, she was more well known.
it's funny how everybody thinks 23andme has some sort of grand plan. they had a grand plan. it didn't work out. now they provide a service that tells you who your relatives are and where you came from (genetically), which works well. But the health side of their product continues to be useless. Genomics continues to be one of the most oversold fields.
I think 23andme will truly have an impact once it starts doing full genome sequencing, because as of right now it just tests a very small subset of the whole genome.
"News".<p>Anne Wojcicki has been upfront with this strategy for many years, even in a fantastic podcast with YC back in 2018: <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5I-on-starting-and-scaling-a-healthcare-startup-23andme" rel="nofollow">https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5I-on-starting-and-scali...</a><p>> If I have the world's health information, what could I do? And people were like, "Well, you could cure, you could save, you'd know a lot." The idea really was, well, we should do that.
So this isn't directly resultant from 23andMe but it's hard to overstate just what a revolution has happened in genetics in the last decade.<p>The specific subfield I'm talking about is genetic genealogy.<p>In the late 20th century, genetic testing was a revolution but it was a simple test. Given two samples X and Y it produced a boolean function:<p><pre><code> f(x, y) -> { 1 if they match, 0 if they don't
</code></pre>
This led to a number of convictions and exonerations. it has been a huge boon for both criminal prosecution and justice.<p>So what happened in the last decade is the development of a more sophisticated function:<p><pre><code> f(x, y) -> [0, 1] showing how related they are
</code></pre>
This most famously led to the identification of the Golden State Killer [1] and also helped identify victims of the Bear Brook murders [2].<p>In the space of 10 years this went from not existing to being a massive labour-intensive process to a trivial process. The use of this is now almost routine thanks to the likes of GEDmatch [3]<p>Beyond this, there's a whole bunch of ethical implications. Privacy covers things like what a DNA testing site can do with your data. This may potentially impact health insurance access in the like, particularly in the US (sadly).<p>But the really interesting part of this is that a person may be identified criminally or for insurance purposes without ever having uploaded a DNA sample through relatives who have. For example, if two cousins on both sides of your family have the recessive gene for Cystic Fibrosis, it increases the probability you do too (though simple Bayesian reasoning).<p>It's going to be interesting to see what comes of this because it's still early days.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Brook_murders" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Brook_murders</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://www.gedmatch.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gedmatch.com/</a>
That's what i signed up to many years ago. I liked their health reports. What's the reasoning for no longer allowing them to give us updated health reports? I don't personally care about my 6th cousins, i can barely keep up with the 2nd ones.
23andMe was insanely inaccurate for 100% of the predictions related to myself. I'm also concerned about what is known or suspected about my family. Especially, with how inaccurate the predictions are.
It's kind of weird to have this experience over and over again of being told I'm supposed to care about something that I find trivial.<p>Yeah, I assumed 23andMe would do stuff like this. I don't care. I'm not outraged. It doesn't bother me when people make money. And this doesn't strike me as a particularly surprising outcome.
I didn't know what this company does, so I've checked website, after usual banners galore, trying to cancel them all I am there.<p>The answer is short:
"Find out what your DNA says about you and your family." Then:
"- See how your DNA breaks out across 2000+ regions worldwide
- Discover DNA relatives from around the world
- Share reports with family and friends
- Learn how your DNA influences your facial features, taste, smell and other traits"<p>What is actual usage of this data? Education? Curiosity? To have something to be shared on Instagram? They don't mention predicting cancer risks, etc. at best this looks like some kind of hobby stuff, like building ones genealogy tree.<p>Or maybe the way to figure out if one is a true kids's father. Could have some interesting consequences.<p>Besides "Share reports with family and friends". Really, is this inevitable, does everything has to be shared with friends, even ones genome details? What next? Proctologist visit outcomes?<p>I don't even mention embarrassment of the "Customer Stories" section. "I feel very much at peace with my identity and who I am as a woman. I feel complete". I don't even want to guess if this is some marketing bullshit or someone really felt "complete" by checking genome...<p>People just don't realize that having their DNA hand over is a risk. A big risk. But I have to admit that company is at least very honest about this risk, which is good and rare, so that's a credit for them:<p>"In the event of a data breach it is possible that your data could be associated with your identity, which could be used against your interests."<p>That's nice way to say, if we are breached, well, we've told you.<p>They also admit that will give ones data to law enforcement. Something good to know too. Genetic material taken from crime scene is often polluted, incomplete, so one can go to prison on behalf of the real criminal.
> Privacy advocates have been warning for years that the spit-tube deal is lopsided<p>Does that mean we could get to the point where they’ll pay us to get access to our DNA (+ medical history?).