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23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

blog.23andme.com

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Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#151

Post by chimeracoder »

philh wrote: post #85
apaprocki wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the spirit of the law is to prevent those types of situations from happening. Wouldn't this cover your situation? "`(1) IN GENERAL- A health insurance issuer offering health insurance coverage in the individual market may not, on the basis of genetic information, impose any preexisting condition exclusion (as defined in section 2701(b)(1)(A)) with respect to such coverage."

In insurance, people who get lucky subsidize people who get unlucky. If you can test luck before getting insurance, then lucky people don't get insurance and there's nobody left to subsidize unlucky people. Forbidding insurance companies to discriminate based on luck does not solve this problem, because the problem is caused by customers selectively buying insurance based on their own luck. (Clarification: I'm descri…

> philh 2 hours ago | link | parent

In insurance, people who get lucky subsidize people who get unlucky. If you can test luck before getting insurance, then lucky people don't get insurance and there's nobody left to subsidize unlucky people.

> Forbidding insurance companies to discriminate based on luck does not solve this problem, because the problem is caused by customers selectively buying insurance based on their own luck.

It's a little more nuanced than that. Let's say men are more prone to car crashes than women. Either you charge men more for auto insurance, OR you charge everyone a flat rate, and the market will rapidly clear itself of all women, since that flat rate will be too high to appeal to women. In this case, you end up with a market that's exclusively men, and women are uninsured.

When applied to health insurance, this means that, if you're forcing companies to insure everyone, they will have to insure people predisposed to expensive illnesses at incredibly high rates, because that's the expected cost of their lifetime care.

One implication of this is that the "no discrimination for pre-existing conditions" portion of the ACA is equivalent to "if you have a pre-existing condition, your coverage will be exorbitantly expensive".

There are ways of hiding this extra cost, but at the end of the day, it's like sweeping dust under the rug: it all has to sum to zero.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#152

Post by khomenko »

mikeash wrote: post #115
khomenko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't have to carve out those pools at all. Insurance is workable if everyone is lumped into a single huge pool. The trouble is that a company which is able to break their clientele into smaller pools will outcompete those who aren't, so you get a bit of a race to the bottom.

Indeed. Singe Payer + Universal Coverage = FTW.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#153

Post by khomenko »

tokenadult wrote: post #124

I 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…

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.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#154

Post by hackinthebochs »

return0 wrote: post #150
mvleming wrote: post #133

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.

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.

The theory is that the woman would want the more hearty sperm, but also want the father who is more faithful and more able to provide. It's a sound evolutionary strategy.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#155

Post by [deleted] »

mvleming wrote: post #149
mcherm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

[deleted]

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#157

Post by justincormack »

mvleming wrote: post #149
mcherm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

Not really. That's a theory and it is one that is hard to disprove experimentally. It is a much stronger theory than evolution, saying that every action is correctly designed to optimise gene transmission. Essentially it is trying to say that we are at a global maximum in a space that is probably more nonlinear. In fact our genes may well be suboptimal in some respects even if you think they have "control". The contortions people go through to try to justify homosexuality as a genetic thing are one example of many. In fact diversity is an advantage in a varying environment so many traits must be suboptimal.

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#158

Post by mvleming »

return0 wrote: post #150
mvleming wrote: post #133

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.

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.

It does imply that. I know a lot of guys who have gone through a period in their life not being able to sympathize with women after learning about this. They would question why even bothering marrying a woman if she is just going to be a cheating whore?

The second point you make is very interesting and I have the perfect rebuttal. Unfortunately I don't have the book with me right now but a quote from a review on Amazon will suffice:

"And on pages 217-218 [Matt Ridley] explains why women cuckold their mates: "This is because her husband is, almost by definition, usually not the best male there is-else how would he have ended up married to her?" She wants the parental care of her husband and some other man's superior-she thinks-genes."

Here is the link to this book (one of the best I've read): http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-Queen-Evolution-Nature/dp/0060...

And although I haven't read this book (if you do, tell me what you think), I know that it talks more about how x% of children are not genetically related to their fathers: http://www.amazon.com/Sperm-Wars-Infidelity-Conflict-Bedroom...

Re: 23andMe raises $50M, cuts price to $99, sets goal of 1M genotyped customers

#159

Post by chad_oliver »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #139
JackWebbHeller wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only on Hacker News would the top reply to a comment about a person discovering their father was not their biological father be about privacy and opt-ins...

So we shouldn't care about privacy here? That's pretty serious if it was how I thought.

No, he's merely saying that we are more privacy-conscious than the average group of people. I don't think he was claiming that was good or bad, just abnormal.
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