Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

23andMe Wins a Second Life, Raises $115M

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–118 of 118 posts

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

#111

Post by amelius »

2bitencryption wrote: post #73
amelius wrote: post #49

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…

You misunderstand. The point is that the more data they have, the more valuable and "accurate" their analysis is -- it's like crowdsourcing genetics by building one large database. So your complaint of "why don't they just sell it at the cost plus a margin" doesn't work here. They're dropping the price because they're paying you for your information to make their service better. It's like Tumblr not having ads (for a…

> The point is that the more data they have, the more valuable and "accurate" their analysis is

This is covered by my comment that participating in research should be voluntary.

> So your complaint of "why don't they just sell it at the cost plus a margin" doesn't work here.

Yes, my complaint makes perfect sense here. They are selling below cost price to build themselves a bigger market. This is not a fair way of doing business, in my opinion. The fact that you are framing this as "we are paying you to help us build a bigger market share" does not make a difference.

In my opinion, everything that is being built by crowdsourcing belongs in the public domain. It is not fair to have one company keeping that information hostage.

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

#112

Post by irremediable »

throwaway_xgqtr wrote: post #74
Karunamon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invasion of privacy? Considering that you can't even get the health information now, ancestry matching is literally the only reason to use the service. Why would you sign up and go through the whole spitting in a cup song and dance if you didn't want to find relatives?

Oh, wow, I am out of date. I didn't realize they had pivoted in that way. Sorry for the distraction :)

I made the same mistake here -- I only knew about it from the health-related stuff.

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

#113

Post by ethbro »

dekhn wrote: post #109
ethbro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, did you use the "TruGenome Predisposition Screen" offering? (Just looked up Illumina: I've been interested, but the 23&Me pricing/privacy concerns squicked me out)

I did Understanding Your Genome http://www.illumina.com/company/events/understand-your-genom... and I'm not 100% sure it's the same thing. Then I promptly uploaded my genome including the VCF files they used for risk screening, https://my.pgp-hms.org/profile/hu80855C Anybody on the internet is free to analyze my genome.

Thanks for the link. They seem to offer a number of different products ranging from the $1,000 "Here's your genome" to $10k "Here's your genome and a detailed analysis of what we've found in it."

What's been your experience with analysis? Something that can be picked up, or something that the professional insights you got were far more useful?

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

#114

Post by macspoofing »

TrevorJ wrote: post #107
dekhn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's kinda bullshit that there seems to be no limit on the information that the government, Facebook et. al. can gather on me, but somehow I can't be trusted with information about my own genetic code unless it's been vetted by the FDA. It's not like I could go have a medical procedure solely on the basis of this information. Yet supplements and diet pills can make all kinds of bogus claims with impunity.

>I think it's kinda bullshit that there seems to be no limit on the information that the government, Facebook et. al. can gather on me, but somehow I can't be trusted with information about my own genetic code unless it's been vetted by the FDA.

All the FDA did was prevent them from making unsubstantiated medical claims from the results of their test, in the same way that they would for, say, a new pharmaceutical. 23&Me could always go and perform the necessary clinical trials and submit the evidence to prove their results to the FDA. FDA is doing what the FDA was designed to do. What's the problem?

>Yet supplements and diet pills can make all kinds of bogus claims with impunity.

That's because the supplement lobby launched a huge political campaign and got congress to change the law barring the FDA from investigating supplements, after the FDA tried to regulate them.

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

#115

Post by disantlor »

xirdstl wrote: post #53
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.

I didn't realize you could get the raw data. I looked a bit on their website and didn't find anything indicating you can. What format(s) will they export?

Not really sure about formatting options but you can get at it here: https://www.23andme.com/you/download/

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

#116

Post by [deleted] »

xirdstl wrote: post #53
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.

I didn't realize you could get the raw data. I looked a bit on their website and didn't find anything indicating you can. What format(s) will they export?

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by devonEnlis »

dekhn wrote: post #109
ethbro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, did you use the "TruGenome Predisposition Screen" offering? (Just looked up Illumina: I've been interested, but the 23&Me pricing/privacy concerns squicked me out)

I did Understanding Your Genome http://www.illumina.com/company/events/understand-your-genom... and I'm not 100% sure it's the same thing. Then I promptly uploaded my genome including the VCF files they used for risk screening, https://my.pgp-hms.org/profile/hu80855C Anybody on the internet is free to analyze my genome.

Here is your data in a format for Enlis Genome Personal: https://s3.amazonaws.com/enlisinstallfiles/customerFiles/PG0...

https://www.enlis.com/download.html

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

#118

Post by dekhn »

ethbro wrote: post #113
dekhn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did Understanding Your Genome http://www.illumina.com/company/events/understand-your-genom... and I'm not 100% sure it's the same thing. Then I promptly uploaded my genome including the VCF files they used for risk screening, https://my.pgp-hms.org/profile/hu80855C Anybody on the internet is free to analyze my genome.

Thanks for the link. They seem to offer a number of different products ranging from the $1,000 "Here's your genome" to $10k "Here's your genome and a detailed analysis of what we've found in it." What's been your experience with analysis? Something that can be picked up, or something that the professional insights you got were far more useful?

My experience was interesting. The uyg clinical geneticists said I had zero genetic predisposition risk! That's a bit surprising it me. II also manually inspected the results and found that most of the risk variants they did see were just genic and I had only one of the snps out of several that are necessary for diseases such as types of cancer.

Personally I found it less than useless, since I can't reasonably conclude I have no risks. I know enough genomics to conclude that beyond a few well understood cases, genomes have little medical predictive ability.

Post reply on HN