Google Invests In Genetic Indexing 74
Bibek Paudel point us to a BusinessWeek report on Google's interest in the cataloging and analyzing of people's DNA. Google has recently invested in DNA screening firms Navigenics and 23andMe, which test customers' DNA for characteristics such as ancestry and predisposition for certain diseases. The customers are then able to give the information to their doctors. This is not Google's first foray into the medical industry.
"Google wants to plant an early stake in a potentially large new market around genetic data. 'We are interested in supporting companies and making investments in companies that [bolster] our mission statement, which is organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful,' Google spokesman Andrew Pederson says. 'We felt it was important to get involved now, at the early stage, to better understand the information generated by this fast-moving field.'"
I read about this in Wired (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/15-12/ff_genomics [wired.com]
I thought it was interesting then. It's also important to point out, Anne Wojcicki's husband's name is Sergey Brin. Having access to massive amounts of computing power makes sense for a genetics company.
Insurance implications? (Score:5, Informative)
23andMe = Sergey Brin's wife's company (Score:1, Informative)
Direct to consumer genetic testing (Score:5, Informative)
The New England Journal of Medicine actually had an interesting article about direct-to-consumer genetic testing (Jan 10, 2008 [nejm.org] -- sorry not a free link (unless you can get it through your institution)). Three main points it makes is that
1. There are questions regarding quality control and transparency. Due to the numbers involved, even small percentage mistakes in sequencing can add up and give wrong information.
2. What is the clinical validity of the sequence such that it can accurately predict the disease? Lack of a sequence may give a false sense of security, and presence of a sequence may cause unnecessary harm.
3. What can you do clinically given the answers? There is little observational or clinical data for how the genetic information can be used effectively, especially for low penetrant conditions.
Clearly, there are disease where knowing ones gene status is very helpful (e.g. BRCA1/2, MEN1/2A/2B, etc...) but many disease we are just in the infancy of determining their genetic basis. The article sums things up like this:
Re:I'm just dying to know (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Insurance implications? (Score:2, Informative)
Don't trust everything your professors (or lawyers) tell you.
A genetic predisposition for a disease in a currently healthy individual is not the same as having the disease. According to HIPAA [genome.gov], genetic information in the absence of a current diagnosis of illness does not constitute a pre-existing condition.
But HIPAA [wikipedia.org] is just the beginning of genetic information protection. The real deal is something called GINA: Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) [wikipedia.org], which recently passed in the U.S. Congress and is pending in the Senate. President Bush has openly supported this bill. So it has some decent momentum.
Further reading: Navigenics provides some good resources [navigenics.com] about legal rights regarding the use of your genetic information, and there was a good article in the Boston Globe [boston.com] on this in Sep 2007.