> How can one thing be good if another thing is even gooder?
Why bother to be flippant this far down a thread on HN?
> It is not a negative-sum game.
I remain surprised that you should be quite so sanguine about the mutual benefit of giving away data to tech companies. 23andMe and others recently announced they would ask for explicit consent before sharing DNA information with other parties. How a genomics company could go on for this long without guaranteeing the privacy of its users is baffling.
> Apparently. Illumina and/or 23andMe chose to put it on the chip, so they apparently felt it was worthwhile.
'Worthwhile' and 'marketable' to a consumer audience are not equivalent, as I have repeatedly pointed out with BRCA testing.
> My point there was a comparison of the regulatory regimes that genetics companies...
You referenced the sequencing of Icelanders, which was indeed a research project (you've read the papers surely) and not a self-referred program, regardless of what else DeCODE does or is. You can't make a point about regulatory conditions in that setting and transfer it to consumer testing. But are you trying to say that it isn't worth testing BRCA because DCT companies might not be allowed to tell people the result, even though 23andMe are currently offering BRCA results?
> Oh, so the rest of that paragraph...
I would suggest that your ongoing efforts to tell me what I meant in my comment are better spent elsewhere. Particularly since as a privately held company, we don't know 23andMe's revenue, what deals have been made or what their future plans and projections are. What we do know is how much VC funding they have received, and the return on investment that VC's expect.
Why bother to be flippant this far down a thread on HN?
> It is not a negative-sum game.
I remain surprised that you should be quite so sanguine about the mutual benefit of giving away data to tech companies. 23andMe and others recently announced they would ask for explicit consent before sharing DNA information with other parties. How a genomics company could go on for this long without guaranteeing the privacy of its users is baffling.
> Apparently. Illumina and/or 23andMe chose to put it on the chip, so they apparently felt it was worthwhile.
'Worthwhile' and 'marketable' to a consumer audience are not equivalent, as I have repeatedly pointed out with BRCA testing.
> My point there was a comparison of the regulatory regimes that genetics companies...
You referenced the sequencing of Icelanders, which was indeed a research project (you've read the papers surely) and not a self-referred program, regardless of what else DeCODE does or is. You can't make a point about regulatory conditions in that setting and transfer it to consumer testing. But are you trying to say that it isn't worth testing BRCA because DCT companies might not be allowed to tell people the result, even though 23andMe are currently offering BRCA results?
> Oh, so the rest of that paragraph...
I would suggest that your ongoing efforts to tell me what I meant in my comment are better spent elsewhere. Particularly since as a privately held company, we don't know 23andMe's revenue, what deals have been made or what their future plans and projections are. What we do know is how much VC funding they have received, and the return on investment that VC's expect.