After FDA Objections, 23andMe Won't Offer Health Information

sciencehabit writes "The company 23andMe will no longer provide health information to people who purchase its DNA testing kit, it announced last night.The change was 'to comply with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's directive to discontinue new consumer access during our regulatory review process,' the statement said. While current customers will still have access to a 23andMe online database noting the health issues associated with their particular DNA, the company will not update that information, and customers who purchased its Personal Genome Service (PGS) on or after 22 November will receive only information about their ancestry and their raw genetic data without interpretation." It would be great to see a secondary market in this kind of analysis emerge.

good riddance

[ljw1004]

Good.

My family all had our genomes sequenced by 23andMe. The only area we have expertise in is Alzheimers, and (1) their Alzheimers explanations were misleading, (2) they made it REALLY hard to learn the raw data about what they found in our genomes, i.e. which SNPs they tested and what they found: instead they only boiled it down into a useless "you have 20% chance of getting Alzheimers" which was scientifically incorrect, lacked confidence levels, lacked context.

I would love to get the raw data from their results, and I'd love to have someone better than them provide the tools to analyze & understand it.

Too bad it's taken down...

[Sean Dunn]

As long as people understand that the results are only based on research/papers, 23andme is really awesome. It's best to discuss things with your doctor, and get things double checked, rather than to treat 23andme as some alternate to proper healthcare and checkups.

I mean, really, who the hell would spit into a tube, pay $100 bucks and start a potentially harmful treatment regimen without seeing a doctor?

Speaking from experience, 23andme did identify that one of her genes leaves her susceptible to having bad side effects of one of the medications she was taking (and she was suffering from this side effect). Taking the 23andme health report to her doctor let her move onto an alternate treatment, which is working *much* better.

I hope that a revisited health report/traits thing comes back soon. Or maybe put it behind a test wall, and make sure people to understand exactly what they are getting.