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Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

investors.23andme.com

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Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#271

Post by edm0nd »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #2

Literally just one day after 23andMe presented positive phase 2 clinical results for two anti-cancer drugs: https://therapeutics.23andme.com/news-and-research/ The board of directors of 23andMe just resigned in protest. The CEO, Anne Wojcicki (who's sister Susan died of lung cancer last month, and was the former CEO of YouTube) had tried to low ball take the company private at only $0.40 a share -- a more than 96% dr…

Anne Wojcicki is also the exwife of billionaire Google founder Sergey Brin.

I have always felt as if 23andMe was just her pet lil project and it doesn't matter if its ever profitable or not.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#272

Post by Spivak »

kelnos wrote: post #221
Spivak wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only gotta last 80 years, it's pretty rational given the constraints. The what-ifs are unlikely to materialize at all, low probability to happen to you, and avoiding them if they do materialize requires that neither you nor any of your relatives submit their dna or have any contact with the justice system ever. DNA is already protected from use by insurance companies so that's a future harm that already got squashed.

Funny you picked 80 years. It's been roughly 80 years since members of a certain ethnic group were hunted down, corralled, and murdered because of their lineage and genetics. And their murderers mostly only had census data and people willing to snitch on their neighbors to go on. A DNA database? Oof.

Thankfully time only goes forward and since I don't expect a large scale ethnic cleansing among the developed world since our birth rates are already below replacement I think we're fine.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#273

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #171
bruceb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closest competitor does a lot of heavy lifting in this situation. Ancestry is the overwhelming leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Look at https://www.ancestry.com/ and https://www.23andme.com/ 23andme has basically given up on this part of the business. Their pitch is health. But that pitch is murky with no good hook to keep you hooked for a monthly subscription. So after they get the ini…

> leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Acknowledging Ancestry.com are well ahead of the market here, but I never got their appeal of finding some long-lost second cousins... basically strangers, and saying, "hey, isn't it fascinating that we share some arbitrary level of common genetic makeup". If some randomer reached out via email to me doing this big reveal I'd be "thanks, but into the s…

Others have shared some more heartwarming tales of using these services but I saw a story that in Australia a project is helping the children of sex tourists to look up their fathers via these services to get child support payments:

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/am/dna-helps-children...

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#274

Post by 23B1 »

Spivak wrote: post #267
23B1 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ethical egoism, not rationalism. Considering the second- and third-order effects of one's own decisions is obligatory in civilized society.

Of course, how could I forget. My DNA is also used for medical research so I'm helping develop novel treatments to all manners of genetic diseases, and helping my future relatives uncover health risks.

blind optimism

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#275

Post by ff317 »

fastball wrote: post #157
rendaw wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with publicizing genetic information is that you're defacto publicizing large amounts of the genetic information of your relatives, who may not be in a life situation where publicizing it carries no risk. This is also an objection many have to 23andMe.

For example?

What if they live in a country in which genetic evidence of a disease can deny or significantly increase the cost of health coverage? Even if you're clear of those for now, a new marker may be discovered tomorrow. Apparently (according another commenter) Life Insurance /can/ legally look at this even in the US. What about employers? What if it puts them on the DNA-evidence hook for a "crime" in their jurisdiction which you and they don't think is an ethical law (evidence of homosexual activity in a country that imprisons for it, or worse).

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#276

Post by pfannkuchen »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #273
Simon_ORourke wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Acknowledging Ancestry.com are well ahead of the market here, but I never got their appeal of finding some long-lost second cousins... basically strangers, and saying, "hey, isn't it fascinating that we share some arbitrary level of common genetic makeup". If some randomer reached out via email to me doing this big reveal I'd be "thanks, but into the s…

Others have shared some more heartwarming tales of using these services but I saw a story that in Australia a project is helping the children of sex tourists to look up their fathers via these services to get child support payments: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/am/dna-helps-children...

If you are sleeping with a prostitute isn’t there like an implied contract that you aren’t responsible for any resulting child? That is practically the entire purpose of prostitution.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#277

Post by samtho »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #171
bruceb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closest competitor does a lot of heavy lifting in this situation. Ancestry is the overwhelming leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Look at https://www.ancestry.com/ and https://www.23andme.com/ 23andme has basically given up on this part of the business. Their pitch is health. But that pitch is murky with no good hook to keep you hooked for a monthly subscription. So after they get the ini…

> leader in the find long lost relative space/your "roots" space. Acknowledging Ancestry.com are well ahead of the market here, but I never got their appeal of finding some long-lost second cousins... basically strangers, and saying, "hey, isn't it fascinating that we share some arbitrary level of common genetic makeup". If some randomer reached out via email to me doing this big reveal I'd be "thanks, but into the s…

The rise of services like 23andMe and AncestryDNA have actually allowed people to discover information about their parentage that they would otherwise not have had access to, basically they find out that one or both of their parents are not biologically related to them. Individual situations range from extramarital affairs, closed adoption, in-familiy adoption (teen gets pregnant, her parents raise the child as a sibling), and those who’s parents chose to conceive with donor gametes. In many of these cases where it is a surprise, the parents have either actively chosen to withhold the information or didn’t know.

In cases where the user is trying to find their parent, it’s statistically unlikely that their parent would have taken the test, but 2nd cousin matches are very common. These seem like a huge distance away, but you can work backwards and build a family tree up to their great grandparents and fan out from there.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#278

Post by psychlops »

stavros wrote: post #193
dvh wrote: post #175

There is absolutely no reason for these companies to collect your PII whatsoever. You should go to nearest pharmacy and buy sterile swab, swab yourself and write long random number on it and send it. Once a month company publishes one giant zip with all the monthly result where you find your file by that random number you wrote.

Or just create an account with a username and password and get the results there, like every other company does.

How would that avoid PII? One assumes there would need to be an email address to recover that account, and that would likely link to every single detail about the owner.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#279

Post by cardanome »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #276
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have shared some more heartwarming tales of using these services but I saw a story that in Australia a project is helping the children of sex tourists to look up their fathers via these services to get child support payments: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/am/dna-helps-children...

If you are sleeping with a prostitute isn’t there like an implied contract that you aren’t responsible for any resulting child? That is practically the entire purpose of prostitution.

If you sleep with someone you are responsible for any resulting child.

Prostitution in the Philippines is illegal so any explicit or implicit contract would be void anyway. Not to mention that consent is questionable anyway when most of these women are either trafficked or forced by economic hardship to partake in it.

Re: Independent directors of 23andMe resign from board

#280

Post by exttam40591 »

itake wrote: post #133
marcell wrote: post #128

I used to work at 23andMe, AMA

did the employees come out ok equity-wise from the spac merger?

No, generally not. 23andMe only ever did ISOs prior to the SPAC merger, not RSUs, and they had a quite high strike price. There was a 6 month insider lock up against selling, so by the time most of us could sell, the price had tanked. By the time I was able to sell, the share price was so low that only my oldest options from when I started at the company in 2014 were in the money.

I ended up making a few 10s of thousands. Not the 100s it would have taken to compensate for the low pay for all those years. And I probably did better than most by selling what I could when I could. Most people weren't in the money at all.

Maybe if you timed the market perfectly you could have done well. I don't know that anyone did.

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