khomenko

that. there are no real parallels here.

"Customers who purchased kits before November 22, 2013 will continue to have access to all the reports they’ve always had."

Everyone who has ordered since November 22nd is offered a refund. The details are on the website and will come in the email. Have some faith, dude. Of course they have to do that.

a) they never marketed themselves as predictors of cancer or told anyone they have major disease b) the criteria for scientific evidence are here https://23andme.https.internapcdn.net/res/pdf/HIC-SXIYiYqXre... (from https://www.23andme.com/for/scientists/)

Yes, in PDF form: https://www.23andme.com/user/report/health/

Yeah, you should be OK.

If you think that's dumb, here are a couple of petitions you can sign:

http://www.change.org/petitions/fda-administrator-margaret-h...

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/overrule-fdas-deci...

Yes, for the mendelian ones that can be inferred in a relatively straightforward way from the raw data. Not really, for the more complicated risk assessments.

You can run the raw data through a 3rd party tool like Promethease (http://snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease) while you wait for the FDA kerfuffle to work itself out. YMMV though.

It's a chicken and egg problem. The more people like you purchase the service, the less European it will become. It has made huge strides in the last couple of years, but there is a way to go still.

It's a mistake to infer that this means "regular" 23andMe results are similarly affected. The exome project was clearly labeled as a research one and the data was returned with no guarantees whatsoever. The "regular" 23andMe SNPs go through a multitude of comprehensive checks before they are used in reports. Not to say that occasional issues don't crop up, but it's apples and oranges.

Edit: I was the first engineer at 23andMe, so I have a decent idea about what's involved in the analysis and quality control.

Indeed. Singe Payer + Universal Coverage = FTW.

You can. Insurance spreads risk across population pools. You have to carve out those pools somehow, so you use broad variables like age and gender. The problem is genetic information has potential to make the pools too small.

Knowing a little bit about the culture of the company, I hope that they will be transparent about any laws they have to comply with, a la Google Transparency report: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government...

To my knowledge, this has not come up yet, but I'm sure it will one day.

They ran an exome sequencing pilot recently, so sequencing is certainly coming.

Broadly speaking, because there are laws on the books that prohibit using genetic information for health insurance discrimination.

Also, California has put a more stringent law on the books in 2011: http://www.privacylives.com/california-passes-bill-to-prohib...

And customs duties. They are not trying to gouge you, AFAIK.

It's OK. Nobody gets your genome. It would be suicidal for them to share, plus there are laws on the books (GINA at the federal level, a stronger law recently passed in CA).

Also, quite a few people have been posting their data openly, for example here: http://opensnp.org/ . So far I am not aware of any adverse effects. Not saying there won't be any ever, but I would be a lot more paranoid about my browser history.

That would be some glitch :) But no, it's the latter.

Next time you think you discovered a gigantic easily exploitable security hole in a mature service that has been around for 10+ years, please think again and research it a lot more before you make a fuss about it. It's possible, of course - but not very damn likely. It's much more likely you are confused. I tried to tell Matt Langley that yesterday on Quora, but he didn't quite buy it, and now he's drinking one big mug of mea culpa. Hopefully this thing will blow over soon, but as a former employee it pains me to see PayPal having to debunk this in social media this morning.

You can "buy it as a gift" and pre-pay the 1-year subscription.

That's certainly true right now, but the information in the health reports gets updated all the time based on new studies, so it will continue to get better.

It is something I know for a fact since I worked at 23andMe for 4+ years. Looks like the first responder already found the relevant section and posted it. It's not an ironclad assurance, and there are a few caveats, but these provisions, together with any scrutiny an attempted acquisition would bring (the database is big and well-known enough where it's virtually guaranteed), can provide peace of mind for some. There are certainly risks and I don't advocate that everyone gets tested without considering them, but "insurance company buys 23andMe, gets all the data, and starts discriminating based on it", is a very low-probability event based on what I know.

If 23andMe is acquired by any company (insurance or otherwise) that wants to change the Terms Of Service and / or Privacy Policy, they will have to notify customers, and those customers who don't agree with the changes would have the right (under the current policy) to download their raw data and delete their 23andMe accounts.

Also, the chances of 23andMe getting hacked are much lower than the chances of your friendly neighborhood email marketing company. I know since I built the site.