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Mapping out your genome is the 21st Century equivalent of staring deep inside your soul; it’s tempting to look, but terrifying what you might find. The DNA divers at 23andMe are hoping that slashing the price of their home-testing service—from $300 (£186) down to $100 (£62)—will be enough to tilt the scales towards discovery. Are they right?
23andMe, founded by Google honcho Sergey Brin’s sweetheart, has had sales aplenty before; back in 2011 it was free for a whole day. But this time the discount is permanent, thanks to a healthy round of funding from folks like, well, Sergey Brin. What’s that $100 get you? Nothing less than your full genomic breakdown, an educated guess of how likely you are to succumb to cancer, Alzheimer’s, halitosis, and so on.
It’s a tantalising prospect, but also a daunting one. If you’re due for Parkinson’s disease in 20 years, is it better to know that now and spend the next two decades worrying about it? Or would you rather live in blissful ignorance? We’ve tried it here at Gizmodo, and it was as unnerving as you’d think. Maybe even more so. Especially because it all just boils down to probabilities.
At least now, though, the determining factor of to genome or not to genome is more likely to be interest than price. Three hundred bucks is a lot of money to find out anything; a hundred still ain’t cheap, but if you want to know this much about yourself this badly, it’s probably easier to scrape that much together. If you do, best of luck. At the very least, you’re genetically predisposed to certain kind of bravery. [23andMe via Geekosystem]
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im actually really tempted
Me too, if the results are good, happy days. If the results say I’m likely to develop something really bad at a certain point, it might just motivate me into doing something with my life before that may or may not happen.
yep, although i already got my shit together this year all on my own and just out of nowhere (maybe i finally grew up! i doubt it but maybe!) even short of that should you find something grim is awaiting you at least you can get prepared for it
* (+£48 for postage) – shhhhh
Why is it so difficult for writers to fact check?
Yes the base cost is $99 but international shipping is $79.95 so the total cost is $178.95 which is not £60, it’s closer to £110 so the headline is almost 100% wrong for UK readers
I’m not a geneticist, but I’m pretty sure they don’t tell you everything about your dna. 23andMe tell you your genotype for a whole load of genes, but there are a lot of genes that they don’t look at e.g. TREM2, recently discovered to affect your risk for Alzheimer’s – you’d be interested to know if you had it (and a lot of ‘non-coding DNA’ that we don’t really know the specific purpose for that they don’t look at).
Know of any companies that offer a far more thorough service here in the UK? I’m really interested in learning more about my own genetic make-up, from background to health. Off to search Google for a credible UK based lab!