The Color Test for Risk of Common Hereditary Cancers in Women and Men | Hacker News Reader

The Color Test for Risk of Common Hereditary Cancers in Women and Men

getcolor.com

21 pointsALee18 comments

Be careful interpreting the numbers about how much risk is increased for certain genes. For example, let's say they point out that a certain gene increases the risk for some malady by 100%.

If the average risk across the entire population being used as a baseline was 0.02% (not 2 percent, but 2 tenths of a percent), then increasing that risk by 100% brings the risk to 0.04%, meaning 4 tenths of a percent, still a very low risk.

The point is, the way they present the risk numbers is overly alarming and designed to get you to buy in to the product. I think some people see numbers like 70% or 100% and immediately think that means those genes indicate a 70% or 100% chance of developing the disease. This is far from the case.

Actually, if you look at how Color has specifically called out most of the risks in their material, they very carefully focus on life-time risks, instead of 'rates'. So, unless they are completely lying with their numbers, you can actually look at their 'risk' rates in the naive way.

For example, the BRCA mutations actually result in a 2-3 fold increase in life time risk in breast cancer (in women), resulting in a 50 to 80% (depending on what study you trust) life time risk in breast cancer. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1247/)

It's kind of weird, but also kind of obvious. Color is choosing to focus on only the highest correlation/impact mutations. They also require physician buy in on every test they sell. Because of that, they're really just going to focus on the blockbluster genes, the ones which we actually have evidence of high life-time risk.

I mean seriously, their BRCA tests by themselves should sell this test - $250 USD is very affordable as far as genetic tests go.

Oh, and hilariously, Color chose to spend some time/space to focus on BRCA (rightfully so, it's one of the great validating cases of the power of genomics and the potential for personalized medicine) without talking about one of the reasons why BRCA tests were kind of stagnant for 20 years was cause BRCA1 and BRCA2 (the genes) were patented, along with any diagnostics involving the those genes.

Exactly! A friend recently got their genetic data from 23 & me and used Promethease to analyze it and it was full of scary sounding stuff like this. I had to talk them down and explain exactly what you did above.

Correction, can no longer edit: 2 and 4 hundredths of a percent, not tenths, oops.

To be fair, some of the risk factors are a lot higher, for example say with a risk of 20%, a 100% increase brings the risk up to 40%, which is not something to dismiss, while still not being the scary-sounding 100%.

From the title, I initially assumed it was about human tetrachromats being more susceptible to certain cancers. I'm really starting to dislike how companies are using common words for their names, and not even bothering with weird spelling anymore. :/

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Human_tetrachrom...

And here I was, imagining a kit with a color spectrometer that would measure skin tone, as a predictor. I thought, that's a novel idea... had to dig a bit deeper on the website, to realize it's saliva-based. Makes much more sense.

How does this compare to 23andme which had lots of problems with FDA and quality of advice it was giving? Does it provide much better quality of risk monitoring for instance?

Color requires a physician to be involved in the ordering of the test. This is also just an expansion of the genes that they are testing rather than an entirely new test. Smaller panels like this are easier to validate.

Call me old fashioned, but I would rather be ignorant of my chances of cancer (even if showing me allows me to live longer). I know getting a high percentage would just cause me lots of anxiety throughout the rest of my life. I'm rather happy not knowing, living in peace, and dying sooner.

If I knew I was at "higher risk" for certain kinds of cancer (which BTW typically means, say, a 10-30% increase on some very small baseline risk, say 1 in 1,000 -- and for only a few cancer types), my reaction would be to make peace with it --

-- and to make a note to myself to get screened more often. So then (in the small chance) that it hits, I know I will have done everything possible to shield my loved ones from the shock of facing my imminent departure, when we could in fact be using the foreknowledge to stretch my relatively pain- and incapacitation-free interval out to its utter maximum.

Being as, whenever you've stared down that window in a loved one (and nearly everyone will at some point in their lives) -- the difference between 6 months versus 6 weeks (or something much smaller, depending on how the final phases play out) can make a huge -- sometimes life changing difference for those around you.

I suffer from severe hypochondria. If I did this test and found out I have a higher change of developing some kind of cancer, I don't think I would be able to sleep well again for the rest of my life.

I hope their infosec is up to spec. A place like this sounds like a valuable target.

also I wonder why nobody seems to have a problem when a private company collects DNA data of the general public.

Because it's opt-in?

because what happens to the data.

What could possible be more sensitive than DNA records? You have to assume most of these places will suffer a data-breach sooner or later. In light of the fact that you can fabricate[1] DNA evidence I think it's a bad idea if any kind of company can request data from the general public in exchange for a kit that isn't even FDA approved. If you look behind the scenes and consider where the real money in this business is the data and not just the sale of the kit.

[0] http://www.forensicmag.com/news/2015/02/dna-evidence-can-be-...

if you have a problem with it, don't participate.

but what if siblings do? or parents? aren't they basically giving out the rest of the family, too?

Why don't we wake up: testing for breast cancer colors to learn theair cancer risk is insignificant when you consider that taking 200 mcg of Selenium every day reduces the risk of breast cancer with a whopping 80%.

Yes, 80% !! Dr Joel Wallach had to sue the FDA 3 times to be able to say this in public. Dr Wallach won so you bet that there is plenty of evidence that a little Selenium should be taken by everybody. It also reduces the risk of prostate cancer by 50%.

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