Obsessed with Our DNA: The Rise and Fall of 23andMe

The High Wire ^

[Tench_Coxe]

When a trusting customer purchases a kit from 23andMe, spits in their tube, and mails it back, they effortlessly provide 23andMe with genetic data on dozens and dozens of their traits. If the intended goal is to discover a family ancestry line, or if they are a candidate for ailments like breast or prostate cancer and other disease-causing variants, then 23andMe may seem like a valuable tool. However, by consenting to let 23andMe run tests, customers agree to user terms set by the company.

(snip)

As the partnership between 23andMe and GSK came to life, besides publicly disclosed deals with Genentech and Pfizer, 23andMe was also partnered with Janssen, Lundbeck, Biogen, and Alynlam Pharmaceuticals to share genetic studies run on anonymous customer data. These alliances continued unchanged once the GSK partnership began, but 23andMe agreed not to enter into any new partnerships focused on drug target discovery for the next five years.

[nickcarraway]

I see what you’re saying. I don’t think the Chinese have the technology to do that yet. Almost every technology they have they stolen from someone else.

[frank ballenger]

to share genetic studies run on anonymous customer data. These alliances continued unchanged

Three part X Files beginning with Paper Clip (the real life post WWII secret operation including getting Werner von Braun to work for the US instead of the USSR). Real history: "In November 1945, Operation Overcast was renamed Operation Paperclip by Ordnance Corps officers, who would attach a paperclip to the folders of those rocket experts whom they wished to employ in the United States."

Back to TV series: "Mulder and Scully find a large complex of filing cabinets containing smallpox vaccination records and tissue samples. After realizing that they're filed chronologically by birth date, Mulder finds Scully's file and also that of his sister. Peeling back the label reveals that it was originally marked with his name."

Everyone who had a vaccination was thus on file and had a sample saved in a vial in a file box in a huge building. For use by the government later.

Back then (1995) there weren't dna companies for genealogy.

And in 1995 dna/rna altering jabs for Covid didn't exist yet.

[dadfly]

your suspicions were well founded.

[MayflowerMadam]

A person’s DNA can be planted.

If you don’t consider that potentially harming you, I guess I just don’t get that. Once it leaves your body the chain of command is broken and the donor has no clue what can happen after that.

[Prince Caspian]

No, I don’t trust any of these bastards with anything. I’m just trying to identify how I would be personally put at risk by my DNA being available. What they would try to do collectively with a broad sample of the population’s DNA is something to be concerned about. But that research (nefarious or otherwise) would happen with or without my personal DNA.

[Prince Caspian]

My personal DNA being “planted.” Now that’s something to consider. Good point.

[citizen]

Why does it matter to me if my name is attached to a particular my DNA sample?

---

Insurance & medical companies want to know your genetic profile for risk assessment, eligibility for high-cost procedures, transplants, and the like.

Med procedures have already been refused if you are not vaxed. The list of reasons to declare you an undesirable and therefore ineligible will only grow.

[Wilderness Conservative]

They sold the data to the Chinese so they can custom engineer bioweapons to kill certain groups of people. 23 and me deserves at least 23 nooses.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

“My personal DNA being “planted.” Now that’s something to consider. Good point.”

You plant your DNA every time you drink at a restaurant or throw away your trash. You would be amazed at how small a sample can be used to identify you.

[Lizavetta]

I don’t think the Chinese have the technology to do that yet. Almost every technology they have they stolen from someone else.

They shovel multi multi millions in "donations" to our esteemed universities. I think they're getting any info they care to have, don't you? They're certainly not going to be content with merely plaques and honorary degrees.

I think they've also figured out that our current batch of "leaders" have less and less love of country and more how can I enrich myself and my family ... and they are capitalizing on that big time.

The White House and Congress has a price tag and they know what it is.

[Right Wing Vegan]

results they send back as far as your ethic anestry are weird, and obviously inaccurate.

In what way? I automatically expected that they want everyone to believe they are mixed and that every white person especially is half arab and gypsy.

[KrisKrinkle]

“How could I be harmed, personally, by this?”

You could be identified as having been at a peaceful protest or some other criminal event. The fact that you were there a week before, not the day of, or that the item they got the DNA from is something you looked at in a store and then put back on the shelf will be straightened out after you’ve been in jail a year or so.

[citizen]

Money has always talked and induced illegalities of all sorts.

I think a difference in the computer age is how much more, these days, our alphabet agencies are willing to, not just "look the other way" so to speak, but to participate, top-down, in the schemes to sell data on everything for raw political power and financial gain.

I don't think any FReepers trust big gov agencies, swamp pols or big lib media.

[webheart]

That only works for the ones who want to know what their ancestry is. Everyone else will not participate. For them, you need a pandemic with lots of tests to find out “who has covid” and then you can build a bigger and better DNA database much faster. Plus there are no consent forms.

[maddog55]

My daughter did the 23 and me shxt.

It was fairly close to what I had been told growing up but there were some oddities. She said said Dad “No wonder you’re good with money, we’re 1% Jew!”

Gotta laugh. The good news is my wife is 12% Native American... They nailed that if not underestimated.

[Vaquero]

“
Silly me, I thought it was just for the Mormons to baptize the dead...”

That’s ancestry
.com not 23 and me

[Ezekiel]

The Dark Side is being played by a much higher authority.

Beware the Ides of March.

23 and Me:

It's the place of first light on America:

Maine (ME)
Single area code for the entire state: 207 ("light" אור)

"Maine became the nation's 23rd state on March 15, 1820, following the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave-holding state and Maine as a free state."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Maine

It's also the place of First Wind.

Furthermore, the state's name is of undetermined origin, yet reads as "from wine" in Hebrew:

מיין

It's an ancient teaching about the unknown:

The wine goes in and the secret comes out,

because "wine" [יין] = 70 = "secret" [סוד]

(From wine comes the secrets.)

Obsessed with Our DNA

mDNA, mtDNA...

That's where the longest stretch of first light appears, on a strange hill named for Hezekiah, whose lone address is the Big Rock at 37 Graves. It's where those who punched their tickets may ascend and descend on two sticks at the proper season (white = open).

Can't miss the place on a terrain map. It sticks out like a sore thumb, as a textbook diagram of a mighty mitochondrion aka the "powerhouse of the cell".

It goes on with the details of the access for the 28 turbines, divided as 20 and 8 (see the sat view), 28 which spells power, the sums as the letters representing 20 and 8 [כח].

Yikes, what people do with their time.

I like to learn a little something new every day.

And now look where we are...

To paraphrase Bilaam,

"Holy smokes, you can't curse these people! They'll make mountains out of molehills!"

~ EZ

[maddog55]

DNA is you... The government having that info allows things like personalized genetic attacks on you and your relatives. May seem minor but if a government can come up with a disease to wipe out anyone with a specific DNA profile it’s possible. Maybe not in my lifetime but a possibility.

There’s good things as well for solving crime etc but remember... If there’s a downside, governments will exploit it.

[caseinpoint]

“Do they really keep the same anonymous?”

I think they promise to do so but then how do cops manage to solve ancient cases using DNA samples from these companies? Besides, promise aside, anyone who can hack might get the information.

[MV=PY]

If you use a password in an account, and it is compromised, you can create a new account with a new password.

If you surrender biometric data, and your data is compromised, you’re finished.

You can’t change your biometric data.

Who would you trust with it? The government? Some company?

No thanks.