23andMe is set to begin selling its product/service this coming Monday. Essentially, you provide a saliva sample and in return you are told what your genetic code has predisposed you to.
You think that you are at risk of diabetes, Alzheimer's, perpetually waking up at noon on a Saturday versus waking up at 6am and singing with the birdies? Well now, you can know, in a way, for $999. I believe the price tag is not steep, for the type of information that you can potentially receive -- but to what extent can you really understand predisposition solely based your genetic makeup?
Of course, nurture is known to play a role in our actualization, and although 23andMe does provide information on how lifestyle (eating habits, exercise routine, etc.) can alter your potential for becoming/having disease X, I don't completely buy it - perhaps, I am just more uneasy about what can be done with this information.
How is the information stored? What are the privacy issues surrounding this technology? Not that the founder Anne Wojcicki (Sergey Brin’s wife) has any bad intentions, but the fact that 23andMe received a $3.9MM investment from Google - does make me a bit skeptical.
Overall, I am for the service, but I would be cautious/leery of how that information will be stored/handled/disposed of, etc. And I am just as concerned that people will start to believe that we are ultimately governed by our genetic makeup.
I recommend the book "It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions" by Richard Lewontin for anyone interested in knowing the kind of information and reliability that we ought to place in our genome.
November 17, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Agreed, especially since proteins not genes are truly what govern our bodies, being that they are the major players in our biochem rxns and are the expression of our genome. Plus I think that this information is unnecessary and that humans should be healthy instead of changing bad habits only when learning they have a genetic predisposition to a certain disease. And would this knowledge promote unhealthy behavior if the person learns s/he doesn't have a predisposition to known diseases?
Post a Comment