Selling Snake Oil and Genome Sequencing
Two months ago, I wrote about 23andme in the context of the FDA shutting down their service. If you visit their site today, you’ll find their notice: “At this time we do not offer health-related genetic reports.”
In my post, I had assumed that 23andme was offering an innovative service. Since then, I have learned that assumption is wrong. The service does not do full genome sequencing. It is actually a really bad probability estimator and is laughed at by competent medical professionals. It is the snake oil of health-related genetic reporting.
Earlier this month, I ran across a post that talks about a much better innovation from Illumina. Their HiSeq X systems can conduct true human genome sequencing at a cost of $1,000 per scan. The post talks about the enormous computational challenges that will come as a data deluge emerges from these new systems. That’s a computational challenge that is exciting for our market and my company.
In any case, the Illumina approach coupled with true full genome computational investigation will yield information that is truly exciting and well-grounded.
It is amazing to me that no matter how flawed the science of the 23andme service, its fun, simple, and network-effect-leveraging design led to huge growth. It’s amazing how much snake oil is still alive in markets today.
What are your thoughts about selling snake oil and genome sequencing?
Related articles
- This is real innovation: Illumina’s new machine slashes cost of sequencing your genome to $1000
- FTC Not Singling Out 23andMe
- Big Data Revolution and Genomics Analysis
- Don’t Like Snake Oil? Stop Buying It!
- Why 23andMe has the FDA worried: It wrongly told me I might die young
- Fred Sanger, sequencing, and the future of examing our own DNA.
- 23andMe surrenders, sort of: Testing kits rebranded to offer ‘ancestry info’ now
From the conversation
Comments preserved from the original post.
a biologist
23andMe is SNP genotyping for detecting variants using microarrays, a fundamentally different approach from HiSeq which is nextgen sequencing and assembly to a reference genome. There’s no snake oil in 23andme. The methods for imputing unknown calls are based on sound statistics.
melonakos
In reply to an earlier comment
I don’t claim to be an expert. But from what I understand, 23andMe is a long ways away from being able to accurately tell health-related information given the type of analysis performed. It can give wild guesses with very low-specificity. So low that it shouldn’t even be marketed as useful health-information. It should be marketed as fun guesses. Right?