Earlier quoted context omitted.
The percentages I've heard are all over the place, but a decent number of children are actually not genetically related to their fathers. (I've heard anywhere between 3% and 30%.) One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes.
> One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes. That would be better expressed like this: > One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs. The speculation about the reason for the affairs is just silly. Seriously. This made-up pseudo-evolutionary…
23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
141–150 of 245 posts
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this isnt a good solution. Imagine the following scenario. A disease hits with p=0.001. To cure it is Very Expensive. Everyone gets insurance that covers it. Now imagine we have a test, that can predict it with certainty. Very soon only those with positive results will want insurance. The insurance against it will become unprofitable and discontinued.
Insurance is a pretty stupid model for health-care financing, in any case. It's not "insurance" if you know that everybody will eventually need to file a claim. But that's one of those inconvenient truths that American politics refuses to confront.
I won't disagree (coming from Canada) that the american "For Profit Medical Insurance" system is pretty cold ("You're poor? You get the cheapest possible health care that keeps you out of the emergency room, which you are more likely to land in because you haven't been getting very good medical care.") - but it is insurance. Some people go fifty years without needing it. Some people make claims multiple times a year for hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care...
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
The percentages I've heard are all over the place, but a decent number of children are actually not genetically related to their fathers. (I've heard anywhere between 3% and 30%.) One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes.
> One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes. That would be better expressed like this: > One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs. The speculation about the reason for the affairs is just silly. Seriously. This made-up pseudo-evolutionary…
My smirk apparently agrees with you. That pseudo-evolutionary statement reminds me of the mouse-over for this xkcd
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#144I did a news search to see what researchers are saying recently about the data analyzed by 23andMe. One news article led me to a company blog post by a bioinformatics researcher, Gabe Rudy, "GATK is a Research Tool. Clinics Beware" http://blog.goldenhelix.com/?p=1534 in which he applied his own industry knowledge to his updated 23andMe report. His conclusions suggest that the product needs much more work: "I promptly…
"Pay your money for the service at the new lower price if you like, but prepared to see your personal genome results repackaged and reinterpreted for years to come before you learn anything from them that will help you improve your health."
This is precisely the spirit of the project from my interpretation. Increase the data set that is available for trend analysis, and therefore increase the quality and precision of the predictive analytics available.
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#145In other news, 23andMe introduced relative finder not long ago. I hadn't logged on in over 2 years after I did it with a groupon promo, but I had a public profile with my name and city. A half-sister i didn't know i had found me with matching DNA, owns a business 5 blocks away and walked over to meet me (what's the probability of that!?). Found my dad was not my biological dad and i was from the same sperm donor as m…
Actually they have the relative finder since a long time ago (i think from the beginning?). Also, you have to consent to that, and when i joined they had a warning that situations like these can happen. Sounds to me that in your case, the website delivered on its promise.
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#146In other news, 23andMe introduced relative finder not long ago. I hadn't logged on in over 2 years after I did it with a groupon promo, but I had a public profile with my name and city. A half-sister i didn't know i had found me with matching DNA, owns a business 5 blocks away and walked over to meet me (what's the probability of that!?). Found my dad was not my biological dad and i was from the same sperm donor as m…
Wow - quite a story! After all that, was it a positive experience? Would you do it again?
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#147How accurate are their results for non-caucasians especially non-mainstream minorities like east indians?
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, President Bush signed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 which covers these topics. Some relevant parts are available here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR00493 : edit: Specifically, "`(A) IN GENERAL- For purposes of this section, a group health plan, and a health insurance issuer offering group health insurance coverage in connection with a group health plan, may not adj…
Gender is determined genetically, and men and woman have different life expectancies. Does this mean you can't charge men and women different rates (all else being equal)?
Sex can easily be detected from the phenotype in most cases.
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The percentages I've heard are all over the place, but a decent number of children are actually not genetically related to their fathers. (I've heard anywhere between 3% and 30%.) One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes.
> One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes. That would be better expressed like this: > One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs. The speculation about the reason for the affairs is just silly. Seriously. This made-up pseudo-evolutionary…
If I asked you "Why do you take your hand off a hot stove?" you might say because it hurts. But the fact that it hurts for us when we put our hand on the stove is our genes trying to keep themselves alive, because otherwise they risk being killed.
In the same way, a person might say they had an affair for whatever reason, but really its their genes who want to be able to pass on themselves.
(Edited for clarity.)
Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, that's what happened. Also, procedures were different back then, so we could have many more siblings, hope we didn't hook up in college.
The percentages I've heard are all over the place, but a decent number of children are actually not genetically related to their fathers. (I've heard anywhere between 3% and 30%.) One theory that's been postulated is that women have affairs to increase the genetic diversity of the sperm that compete for her egg, thereby increasing the chances that her children will have good genes.
This kind of rationalizing doesn't sound really serious. Does that not imply that women deceit their partners and are thus genetically predisposed liars?
Also, if she has chosen a partner it means he (and his sperm) are better genetically. If anything, she should be avoiding others' (inferior) sperm.