When Anne Wojcicki’s son was a baby, she ran a swab across the inside of his cheek, collecting DNA to send to a lab. Last year, when she was pregnant with her daughter, she tested her amniotic cells. The goal in each case: to get a glimpse of her children’s genes and determine whether they contain certain kinks that increase the risk of developing anything from gallstones to multiple sclerosis. “As a parent,” says Wojcicki, “the most responsible thing I can do is get as much information about my children as possible so I can then think through how I can make them as healthy as possible.”
Wojcicki isn’t just any random parent, though. She’s a Yale-educated biologist and the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe, a company in Mountain View, Calif., that sells DNA analysis directly to consumers — no doctor required (See TIME’s inside look into 23andMe’s genetic testing lab here). “Your information is your information,” says Wojcicki, who is married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “If you want it, you should be able to have it.”
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View the original article here: Test Your DNA For Diseases — No Doctor Required – TIME
