As I've said before, the first Knome customers will be getting a pretty rough deal: a vast sum of money forked out for a pretty minimal return in terms of useful information, given our currently dismal understanding of most of the genome. Conde does his best to make this prospect sound more attractive:
...these early adopters will also be pioneers in the personal genome revolution and will be amongst the first people in history to be fully sequenced. These participants will be on the cutting edge of science and medicine. They will have access to the latest information as it becomes available and those that are willing to learn as we learn (and can appreciate risk prediction and the changing nature of our scientific understanding) will be best positioned to benefit.
Certainly, the early adopters will experience the warm glow of the pioneer. And it's true that they'll have their genome sequence in hand to take advantage of each new research finding that pops up over the next five years. But by the time we have enough genetic information to make a genome sequence seriously useful - in, say, five to ten years - the cost of sequencing will be down by three orders of magnitude. That's when I'll be buying my sequence!
Of course, Dan Stoicescu and other Knome early adopters didn't decide to purchase their sequences through a cold, logical cost-benefit analysis. Stoicescu explained in a recent NY Times article that he views his purchase as "a kind of sponsorship" - in other words, his over-spending will pave the way for affordable genome sequencing for the rest of us.
In any case, as sequencing costs plummet the real money is going to lie in sequence interpretation - translating six billion DNA letters into useful medical information, and then conveying that complex information to a customer in terms they can understand. Conde's interview suggests that Knome has invested heavily in this process, which should put them in a good position to compete with the inevitable flotilla of genome sequencing companies that pop up over the next five years.
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