UK controversy over 23AndMe

A report in The Guardian gives a pretty negative reaction to 23AndMe's European launch today:

The service is likely to provoke controversy in the UK, where authorities have warned that genetic tests are often meaningless yet can provoke needless anxiety among those who take them. Last month the Human Genetics Commission condemned them as a dangerous waste of money and called for regulations to control their marketing.

[...]

In the UK, however, the Human Genetics Commission's report on direct-to-consumer tests warned that neither exact nor complete knowledge of what differences in the chromosome pairs mean exist yet. "Our advice to the public is that with many of the tests currently on the market people are wasting their money," said Dr Christine Patch, co-author of the report. "At the moment the science is simply not strong enough. The tests could be positively harmful if the results caused unnecessary anxiety or gave false reassurance."

Dr Helen Wallace, director of the pressure group Gene Watch, is equally concerned. "Our main concern is that the human genome is set to become a massive marketing scam," she said, adding that special diet foods and pills had been promoted on the back of tests. "Genetic tests like these are not regulated and the science is still poorly understood - so there is a real danger people could be misled about their health."

Ouch. There's certainly some valid criticisms in there, but the alarmist tone is a little over the top. I don't think anyone would argue with the statement that "neither exact nor complete knowledge of what differences in the chromosome pairs mean exist yet" - in fact, it's likely that it will be decades before we can even come close to fully understanding the effects of human genetic variation. That doesn't mean it's not interesting to look at what we do know.

I liked this statement from 23AndMe's founders:

Wojcicki and Avey argue that those who want to know about their genetic make-up should be treated as adults and given the data, together with careful explanations of what it means.

I couldn't agree more, and I hope that 23AndMe lives up to this ideal (so far, what I've seen from the company has been largely reasonable, but I'd welcome examples to the contrary).

Appropriate regulatory frameworks will help, but one factor that I think will eventually rein in the scammers is the raw power of the internet. If providers of direct-to-consumer genetic testing fail to provide clear and accurate information about the predictive power of their testing, they should (and will) be called on this by independent bodies and external reviewers (such as genetics bloggers!). With a few Google searches consumers should be able to get a fair idea of how much they can trust a testing company - and eventually, most companies will find it is in their own best interests to provide accurate information up-front.