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Build-a-Baby gets patented by 23andMe. Cue outrage.

6 pointsby fortepianissimoover 11 years ago

2 comments

a_bonoboover 11 years ago
I think this is more gimmick than anything else, like most of the services personal genomics companies provide.<p>SNPs don&#x27;t tell you much about a person&#x27;s perceived &quot;beauty&quot; and probably tell you only little about disease risks, and there are myriads of problems in the current literature of SNP-associations. Many associations (which go into this baby predictor thing) turn out to be unreproducible once you check a more diverse, or a bigger set of humans for associations. If you search Google Scholar for &quot;failure to replicate GWAS&quot; you&#x27;ll get 1940 results for 2013 alone.<p>The only predictions that work are the phenotypes you get from your population history: eye color, hair color, skin color etc. But to predict that you don&#x27;t need SNPs, you only need eyes. That&#x27;s also cheaper.<p>Edit: I&#x27;m not saying that GWAS are crap all in all - they&#x27;re useful in science in identifying candidate regions which may harbor genes related to favorable traits like resistance to a certain disease etc. They&#x27;re just not very useful overall for private customers.
matthewbakerover 11 years ago
Reading this comments constitutes an NDA signature:<p>Wrap a dating service around this and we can finally bring back the eugenics movement.<p>OkSuperiorRace.com? PlentyofPerfects.com? eSuperhumanarmony.com?<p>With your special financial contribution, we can make this dream come true!