My risk-benefit ratio for personal genetics

dna x
Image via National Geographic. Credit: Micah Baldwin/Flickr

Several weeks ago, the FDA smacked down 23andMe by sending them a cease-and-desist letter. Because of 23andMe’s lack of cooperation with the agency, the company was no longer allowed to sell its spit kits that gave customers (including me) a look at medical information regarding their genome.

Experts will quibble over the medical value of this or that variant or combinations of variants. For the sake of argument, though, let’s say that the information has absolutely no medical value. Let’s say that every single risk prediction that 23andMe gives me turns out to be just as likely to be wrong as right. Even in that case, I think there’s a huge benefit of personal genomics that is rarely talked about: public education.

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