23andMe Announces Sequel to ‘Gattaca’
by John Paczkowski
Posted on November 19, 2007 at 12:18 PM PT
There is no gene for the human spirit.
Only one criterion : genetic perfection.”
The Genetic Nondiscrimination Act of 2007, which would prevent health insurers and employers from using genetic information in decisions of employment or insurability, will soon be signed into law. And, given recent advances in retail genetics it really couldn’t happen at a better time.
This morning the Google-funded 23andMe opened its doors for business, and began peddling its Personal Genome Service. What, exactly is a “Personal Genome Service?” Kara Swisher explains:
For [$999], a person spits out a largish saliva sample using an at-home kit, sends it in for intense analysis and then uses the site’s interactive tools to go to town with the scads of the DNA information.
“That could mean everything from analyzing personal ancestry and genealogy to determining inherited traits to finding out way too much about proclivities for a range of scary diseases.”
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