Review: 23andMe DNA Testing for Health, Disease & Ancestry

My first job out of college was with a startup that did health risk assessments. Part of this involved the use of new genetic markers for disease. This was decades ago (yes before the Internet even!) so it was early days for genetic testing. We had an expert system that put a questionnaire in front of customers and charged them for the resulting recommendations and any tests we did.

Two 'hot' technologies of the time: expert systems and genetic testing.

We learned:

1. people want >answers< not statistical results.

2. people told they have a significant probability of a disease get unhappy. Do that enough times someone gets unhappy enough to sue. So your follow-up debriefings have to be done carefully and in person - very expensive.

The lawyers that ran the company did not see the cost of lawsuits, on top of the high cost and error rates for genetic testing at the time, as a deal breaker going in.

Good to see 23andMe make what looks like a better attempt at this market.

Some great conversation on Louis Gray's Buzz, including a comment by the 23andMe co-founder:

"This is one of the most thorough and accurate summaries I've seen (I'm the co-founder of 23andMe). One small point...the testing technology 23andMe uses is highly accurate, it's just the interpretation of what the datapoints means which is, in some cases, early and subject to revision (this would be equally true if you sequenced the entire genome vs. genotyping, which is the SNP-based technique used by 23andMe)."

http://www.google.com/buzz/louisgray/ZMEciBEeakh/Review-23an...

We got the family package and were pleased with the results. My wife was even offered a free package to give to relatives because her genome was so unique to them.

Note that you can download the raw data from 23andMe and go to the public http://www.snpedia.com and use the app they have (Promethease) to get lots of additional details that match your individual SNPs/genes.

Most of the SNPedia data (that 23andMe didn't have) was from newer studies without massive amounts of confidence, but it was still fairly interesting.

I'm really interested in 23andMe but I'm always a bit concerned about privacy...

The family package is an excellent idea, Paul.

Very cool. I wonder if they continuously update the correlative research and its implications for existing customers. That seems like the portion which needs the most work and I would hope you wouldn't have to pay $500 every few years to see the latest results.

I would definitely subscribe to an annual service that would ping me every time a new report came out with implications for me.

Very interesting stuff. Probably the greatest value will be the wealth of data gathered from the biobanking you agreed to. Glad you consented to that. DNA is mind-boggling, and Watson & Crick made the most import discovery of the Century elucidating its double-helix architecture in 1953, in my opinion.

other “Relative Finder" - review:

"The odds of knowing your cousins: 23andme Part 1"

http://ideas.4brad.com/odds-knowing-your-cousins-23andme-par...