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> I guess you're being sarcastic, but it's not that I fear progress will stop.

I'm not being sarcastic. Any technology that tries to correlate genetic markers with behavioral characteristics will be regulated out of existence. I'm not taking a position one way or the other as to whether this is a good idea, but I'd bet money on it being the outcome.

> Doesn't at all make it right, good, or mean I won't bitch about it.

Sure. But what it does mean is that it's an intended consequence, rather than an unintended consequence as your characterization suggested.

Any technology that tries to correlate genetic markers with behavioral characteristics will be regulated out of existence

I'm sure that there are those who would like to make all such pursuits illegal. Such a slippery slope, though. Where will that line be drawn? Which 23AM style correlation question should be illegal for inclusion in their correlation determination system?

  1. Do brussel sprouts taste bitter and unpleasant?
  2. Are you more active in the mornings?
  3. Do you prefer blondes to brunettes?
  4. Do you carry debt on your credit cards month-to-month or pay them off?
  5. Did you graduate college?
  6. Do your joints ache after rigorous exercise?
  7. Have you ever been arrested for a felony?
  8. Are people with a great deal of money more lucky than clever?
  9. Does hard work tend to lead to financial success?

4, 5, and 7, obviously.

not obvious

Fairly obvious: 4, 5 & 7 request factual answers. The rest are asking for opinions.

Strictly speaking, the others are not opinions, they are subjective.

any friction in the process compounds the amount of time for "the future" to be here

You're one of those people that rides bicycles without any brakes then, I take it.

You're one of those people who sees "needless friction" in the previous sentence and tries to make an out-of-context argument against a position that I obviously don't hold.

It's hard to tell what position you hold, since the kernel of your argument seems to be that 23AM is a low-cost democratizing alternative to existing licensed medical technology, and should therefore be free to market itself without FDA approval. Do you also believe that of the companies who sell apricot pits as a cancer cure? I doubt it, but the logic you use sustains both arguments.

Where oh where did I say anything about "alternative to existing licensed medical technology"? Where has 23AM indicated such a thing whereby I'm supporting that argument by proxy?

Where did I or 23AM indicate that they had a cure for anything whatsoever?

The answers are "nowhere", "nowhere", and "nowhere".

This is disingenuous. The FDA doesn't claim 23AM markets a "cure" either.

Nobody said anything about a cure until you brought up apricot pits as being analogous.

So your position is that the FDA should not have the power to regulate diagnostic tests. I think I understand now.

My position is that the FDA should have better things to do with its limited budget that never seems enough to keep up with the drug and treatment approval process than to go after innovative companies like 23AM.

And if only a few people die, then no big deal, right?

As though lives are more likely to be lost because 23andMe is putting more information out there than are going to be lost because of all the years behind we would be without extra information.

Take down the giants upon whose shoulders we could be standing upon and be happy that no one is so tall that they can fall and hurt someone.

https://www.23andme.com/store/cart/ explicitly claims the test can help you manage your health.

And when the word "help" means "instead of", I'll think you might have a point... but it doesn't so you don't.

For whatever it's worth for you to know, it would have been easy to make that same point without being nasty about it, and I think the nastiness harms your argument. "But it doesn't so you don't" makes one sound like an angry teenager; it's a wordier way of saying "so there!". You don't see a lot of adults tacking "so there!" onto the ends of their arguments, because it's a self-evidently silly thing to add.

I do have a point, because it's possible for one factor among several to weight someone's choice. However, you're nitpicking at my paraphrase, while ignoring the content at the link which I supplied (which was why I supplied it.

The specific claim made by 23andme, without disclaimers, is: 23andMe empowers you to better manage your health and wellness. This seems to me like a straightforward claim of diagnostic value; the fact that it's non-exclusive is beside the point.

I think whether it's exclusive is a very large part of the point.

I disagree. certainly, the risk of misdiagnosis is is inverse proportion to the degree of supplementarity, but that can still affect an awful lot of people and result in significant economic loss. It seems to me that some people want to argue this on a binary basis, ie since 23andme does not purport to replace the advice of a primary physician, its liability for misdiagnosis therefore should fall to zero. To me, though, it seems quite likely that if 23andme suggests a risk factor that is greater than the probability spread between different options offered by a patient's physician(s), then it's very likely that the 23andme data will be given excess weight given the notoriously poor grasp of Bayesian inference among the general population (and even among some groups of clinicians).

If anything, the supplementary nature of 23andme's test data should make compliance easier, since their burden will drop proportionately under the B<PL formula employed to assess tort liability in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence

I wonder if you and other folks who seem to be espousing this binary approach live in or hail from states with contributory negligence regimes.

there have definitely been, uh, attempts at eugenics in the past. less sophisticated, overt attempts, but you can not remove the smell of certain things, no matter the scientific veneer pasted over them.