Since I cannot respond to the flagged post:
> What the fuck is with the shills on hacker news?
I am not defending 23andMe as a company, as I am not aware of how clearly they have communicated with customers in the past or whether they have stuck to what they have said. I do know a number of people that were excited about their results being used in research, so I assumed it was common knowledge that was the path that 23andMe was taking. I tend to be more suspicious, so I have stayed away from their product/service/exploitation myself. I am, however, excited about some of the academic, non-profit work (by friends of mine) made possible by their data, which will eventually benefit mothers and children during pregnancy.
> Nonsense. There is value in individual data and aggregated data.
Sorry, I left the background and my assumptions unstated. In general, genetic information is of no value without substantial background knowledge (e.g., much like a book in a language you don't understand). Some of that knowledge is in the public domain and has been laboriously collected over long periods of time and at great public expense through grants (e.g., molecular studies tracking down mutations that affect proteins). The diseases that affect large numbers of people involve lots of genetic variants and new approaches are needed (e.g., Genome Wide Association Studies). For statistical reasons, these approaches require very large numbers of participants to detect variants that contribute to the disease. Statistically, people using 23andMe are more likely to benefit (albeit modestly) from this knowledge, which requires aggregated data, rather than the rare disease data.