genomeboy.com

I am assuming the timing of the “going bust” thought experiment was only a coincidence:

Personal genomics startup 23andMe has just gone through a round of layoffs, we’ve confirmed. The company declined to comment on how many people were laid off, but offered this statement:

We have reduced our staffing levels in a restructuring of our workforce. This was a very difficult decision, but one that we felt was necessary to achieve 23andMe’s long-term business development goals and maintain our strength in the industry.These cuts, which are a reflection of the current economic environment all companies are facing, will allow us to continue to invest in the growth of our Personal Genome Service and research endeavors.

Given the Halloween season, this story seems appropriate somehow:

A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore.

But the intrusions visited on Jenny Paton, a 40-year-old mother of three, were startling just the same. Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car).

Excerpts from The Federal Register, 7 October 2009 (pdf, but a total page-turner):

Genetic information is defined, with respect to an individual, as information about the individual’s genetic tests or the genetic tests of family members, the manifestation of a disease or disorder in family members of such individual (that is, family medical history), or any request of or receipt by the individual or family members of genetic services. The definition further clarifies that genetic information does not include information about the sex or age of any individual.

A disease, disorder, or pathological condition is manifested when an individual has been or could reasonably be diagnosed by a health care professional with appropriate training and expertise in the field of medicine involved. However, the definition further provides that a disease, disorder, or pathological condition is not manifested if a diagnosis is based principally on genetic information.

GINA’s prohibition on the use and collection of genetic information could increase the potential for adverse selection in the individual health insurance market. Adverse selection arises when individuals seeking coverage have information about their health risks that issuers do not know.

To the extent that GINA and these interim final regulations prohibit group health plans and issuers from incentivizing employees to complete [health risk assessments]  requesting genetic information including family medical history, and response rates for HRAs drop as a consequence, a cost may be incurred that is associated with the forgone benefits of identifying disease risks early and preventing their onset.

The more I read this statute, the less I like it.

Stephen Quake discusses what he learned from his genome:

FWIW, Quake, co-founder of Helicos, interpreted his sequence using Trait-o-matic, an open-source app developed in the Church lab that I and the rest of the PGP-10 are using to interrogate our genomes and about which I expect to have more to say in the near future.

A few months ago Dan Vorhaus asked me to contribute a brief commentary to his and his colleagues’ fantastic blog, The Genomics Law Report. The admittedly modest fruits of my labor are now up.

Dear Dr. Board-Certified Clinical Geneticist:

First of all, thank you! Sure, you could have bailed after pediatrics or internal medicine and made more money, but you chose to stick around for a couple more years, incur still more debt, and make less. Much less! (Fortunately, you are a doctor and not a financial adviser.)  And a fine doctor you are, schooled in the ancient art of dysmorphology, which is probably as inscrutable to your molecular-fetishist colleagues as exon-capture protocols are to you.

It is meant to be light and to both poke a bit of fun at and sympathize with medical geneticists. I thank David Dimmock for helpful feedback, though all of the blame lies squarely with me.

For a more responsible take, please read Hank Greely’s commentary.

Mazel tov to the chromosome-centric Nobelists:

Greider, 48, said she was telephoned by just before 5 a.m. her time with the news that she had won.

”It’s really very thrilling, it’s something you can’t expect,” she told The Associated Press by telephone.

People might make predictions of who might win, but one never expects it, she said, adding that ”It’s like the Monty Python sketch, ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”’