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Comment by DKnoll | Hacker News Reader

Several members of my family and I have used 23AndMe. It's interesting. I haven't logged into the site since about a week or two after getting it, but the health stuff was interesting (didn't really learn anything new but it was cool). The ancestry portion is the biggest appeal for most people, and my mom gets a kick out of it as she's into genealogy.

On the other hand, where it was a novelty for my family, it has ruined others... so make sure it's a door you want to open. ;)

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I am not too interested in ancestry, I'll probably just look at it out of curiosity and thats it. More interested in their health reports.

What do you mean by "ruined others"?

23andme was invaluable to me for health, but that is rarely the case. Most likely you won't learn anything profound from it, though if do you learn something important it is probably not going to be good news. I personally much prefer that I know my results now and be able to take action to address them than to not know, but I am also able to take a sort of stoic view toward it without worrying about it and allowing it to impact me negatively. Many people would rather remain ignorant of potential risk factors which may actually never impact them than worry their whole lives about something outside of their control(at least for now. CRISPR?). It can severely disrupt the lives of some types of people and cause them anxiety. So before you take it you should ask yourself if you are the type of person who would worry and obsess over it and allow it to disrupt your life. Though if you do find unpleasant results, most genotypes, with a few exceptions, are only weakly correlated with their risks so don't take most of the results too literally. And even for many of the genotypes with very strongly established links to disease, most are only risk factors, and only increase the probability of an outcome.

I don't think 23andme is currently reporting on health risks anymore until they get things cleared with the FDA, though, and the other reports they currently offer are not really useful. You still have access to the raw data, though, and can use a third party like https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease to analyze the data. It will generate a report for you, but remember these reports will try to link your SNPs to pretty much any studies available, even when there is very little evidence or low confidence of the interpretation. Don't take most of the results seriously unless it is well studied and well established. This may be difficult to determine sometimes unless you have a background in science or medicine, and it is a good idea to consult a medical professional first if there is something that you think is significant and concerns you.

I've heard of people commonly using the service Promethease ($5) to match up their data from 23andMe with SNPedia until the issue with the FDA that prevents collecting data and sharing analysis from one service is resolved.

https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease

They still offer health information in Canada (where I live).

https://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5975653/with-genetic-testing-i-...

If you want ancestry, then why not use the larger DNA database service through ancestry.com?

Seems to me like that would be the ideal solution for you.

I can import my 23AndMe data into Ancestry.com.

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