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23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

forbes.com

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Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#41

Post by robbiep »

disantlor wrote: post #10
mmanfrin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than that, all the things I've seen are marginally useful at best. Part of it is that the FDA successfully sued 23AM from showing things like health risks.

You can always export your raw data from 23andMe and plug it into third party (and I guess foreign) services that will give you some health info. Of course you should probably approach the results with some skepticism. I know someone who found out she had a gene that causes an early and very aggressive cancer and now can take pre-emptive measures that quite likely will save her life.

It is very likely that someone finding this information would have been able to discover it by looking at their family tree. Serious genetic diseases do have a small de novo rate but by and large are already there just being passed down

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#42

Post by stream_fusion »

dekhn wrote: post #15
mmanfrin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than that, all the things I've seen are marginally useful at best. Part of it is that the FDA successfully sued 23AM from showing things like health risks.

That's not correct. The FDA made them stop doing something they were doing illegally. Their genetic test is a medical device and they didn't have federal approval. Further, when the FDA informed them they needed approval, they didn't respond. The FDA finally had to invoke the law. Also, I don't think 23&Me's test results have enough medical value to be used for evaluating health risks. Further, 23&me's database has s…

> Also, I don't think 23&Me's test results have enough medical value to be used for evaluating health risks.

Insurance companies would have another view.

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#43

Post by RobAtticus »

hueving wrote: post #29
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

23andme user here (one of the first). If the disease in question could be hard to handle mentally/emotionally, they specifically include a warning that is very direct and says "Are you sure you want to know this?".

That's basically telling them with ambiguity attached. I'm not sure it's much better.

It shows that message regardless of whether you have an increased risk or not. The presence of the message is not an indicator either way, so if you'd rather not know you simply ignore it.

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#44

Post by lfuller »

hueving wrote: post #28
refurb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to do with the FDA protecting the public from crappy medical devices and drugs. IF you want to sell a genetic test, you need to prove to the FDA: (1) that your test is accurate and reproducible, (2) that whatever conclusion you draw from the test is scientifically sound. The issue was that 23&Me was saying "you have this SNP, that means your risk of X is increased by Y%". The test, the result and the conclusio…

>It has to do with the FDA protecting the public from crappy medical devices and drugs. Which devices and drugs were 23&Me selling? I thought it was just crowd-sourced information about traits. Think how ridiculous it would be if the FDA just shut down a crowd-sourced database about trait correlations. But suddenly when a company like 23&Me correlates the two, it becomes pure, concentrated evil that must be subject t…

23&Me was using a medical test to give users data regarding their risks of certain diseases without sufficiently proving to the FDA that that data was accurate.

It's not a stretch to imagine someone acting on that information with potentially dangerous results; taking extra unneeded supplements, having elective surgery, dramatically changing their lifestyle to reduce the risk of some condition, etc.

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

hueving wrote: post #28
refurb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has to do with the FDA protecting the public from crappy medical devices and drugs. IF you want to sell a genetic test, you need to prove to the FDA: (1) that your test is accurate and reproducible, (2) that whatever conclusion you draw from the test is scientifically sound. The issue was that 23&Me was saying "you have this SNP, that means your risk of X is increased by Y%". The test, the result and the conclusio…

>It has to do with the FDA protecting the public from crappy medical devices and drugs. Which devices and drugs were 23&Me selling? I thought it was just crowd-sourced information about traits. Think how ridiculous it would be if the FDA just shut down a crowd-sourced database about trait correlations. But suddenly when a company like 23&Me correlates the two, it becomes pure, concentrated evil that must be subject t…

> Which devices and drugs were 23&Me selling?

They were marketing their genetic testing kits and related services for diagnosing genetic diseases and risks. That made it a "medical device" within the scope of the Food and Drug Act, which means that they needed to actually have specified level of testing establishing the validity of the things its was being used to assess.

The FDA noticed the violation, notified 23andMe, said, if you want to keep doing this, you need to meet the requirements, and please tell us how you plan to come into compliance. And 23andMe blew them off for quite a while, so the FDA enforced the law.

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

ececconi wrote: post #9
mmanfrin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than that, all the things I've seen are marginally useful at best. Part of it is that the FDA successfully sued 23AM from showing things like health risks.

I still see the health risks, like to heart disease, cancer, etc. Might be because I'm grandfathered in?

Yes, the restriction is on marketing products to diagnose, treat, etc. Once you've bought the product, the FDA doesn't prohibit the seller from continuing to provide service (and, to the extent that they contracted to provide the service, stopping providing the service could leave them liable to the purchaser.)

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#47

Post by anon1mous »

mmanfrin wrote: post #6
ececconi wrote: post #3

I was so excited when 23andMe dropped their prices to $99 a few years ago and immediately gave myself a 'Christmas Present' and bought a 23andMe kit. I seriously thought this was the future. I was so excited to see my health information. It was really cool to see that my spit could confirm that I'm 1/2 asian and 1/2 european. Also, I found it interesting that I have more neanderthal DNA than 99% of people who took th…

Other than that, all the things I've seen are marginally useful at best. Part of it is that the FDA successfully sued 23AM from showing things like health risks.

FDA is US only. 23AM has a lot of customers from the rest of the world, that get all the health analysis.

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#48

Post by anon1mous »

robbiep wrote: post #41
disantlor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always export your raw data from 23andMe and plug it into third party (and I guess foreign) services that will give you some health info. Of course you should probably approach the results with some skepticism. I know someone who found out she had a gene that causes an early and very aggressive cancer and now can take pre-emptive measures that quite likely will save her life.

It is very likely that someone finding this information would have been able to discover it by looking at their family tree. Serious genetic diseases do have a small de novo rate but by and large are already there just being passed down

Wrong.

For one people used to die a lot younger, many genetic defects will only kill an older, weaker human.

For two the environment is different, e.g. many more cancerogens in and around us. Just have a look at the cancer rates. A middle aged man in US today has a 70% chance of getting cancer during his lifetime.

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#49

Post by amelius »

I don't like this sentence from the wikipedia page [1]:

> The price of the full direct to consumer testing service in the United States has reduced from $999 in 2007 to $99 in 2012, and it is effectively being sold as a loss leader in order to build a valuable customer database.

First, why can't companies these days just sell me a product for the cost price plus a margin? This seems like a fair way of doing business.

Second, what do they want to do with my data? Why do they think it is valuable (will they sell it)? Why can't I just get my data without them keeping a copy of it?

(It isn't because they offer an online comparison/discovery tool, since they could easily offer that as a downloadable app, so they don't need my data on their servers; it also isn't because they need to do research on the data, i.e., to find correlations, because they could make that voluntary).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe

Re: 23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

#50

Post by greglindahl »

For me, the most interesting thing about my 23andMe results was that my Y chromosome confirmed the family rumor that my grandfather was not actually the son of his father. If enough people join 23andMe, it's possible that I may find my actual relatives.

Many people find this sort of thing creepy. I'm OK with it.

And on an even-more-personal note, as a guy with long hair, it was exciting to learn that I didn't have the male pattern baldness gene, even though my maternal grandfather was bald as an egg by the time he turned 40.

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