6 ms·
This is a damning indictment of Wojcicki's management of the company. Failed execution on the drug development strategy over 10+ years, lying about growth, push
by ilamont 3y ago
This is a damning indictment of Wojcicki's management of the company. Failed execution on the drug development strategy over 10+ years, lying about growth, pushing out the cofounder, never making a profit, hack that went undiscovered for months ... about the only area she's had success is raising money and that's in large part thanks to being a member of the Silicon Valley elite.
If she can't convince her family, friends, and connections to pony up more cash, the company will likely be sold as the DNA and profile information has real value. I worry that it will go to PE (like Ancestry.com) or a global data broker that will strip-mine the assets in every evil way you can imagine (and maybe even some we can't).
- dr-detroit 3y ago[dead]
- progbits 3y agoIf they go bankrupt they should destroy all the data but of course they will rather sell it to recover at least a bit of money.
- kibwen 3y agoRemember that it's good opsec to rotate your genome every six months.
- welfare 3y agoThat's hilarious. I'm imagining CRISPR as a tool to scramble your DNA every so often.
- SOVIETIC-BOSS88 3y agoThat sounds like a terrifying cyberpunk novel that I would definitely read. Although I hope the future is not that bleak.
- idatum 3y agoReminder of the film Gattaca which explored some of the risks of leaking your DNA in a future dystopia.
- paulddraper 3y agoSuch a good movie. (If a bit slow paced.)
- SOVIETIC-BOSS88 3y agoExcellent movie. Did not see it when it was released orignally, but discovered it by chance going through the tv channels. A real gem.
- seanhunter 3y agoAlso you have to have a genome with at least one uppercase, one lowercase, one number and one special character that isn’t \/‘` or ”
- ackbar03 3y agoSomeone should do a genome manager startup
- Tuna-Fish 3y agoIf they file for bankruptcy, they cannot legally destroy the data. The data is a salable asset, the law requires them to preserve it so that it can be sold and the money returned to creditors. And many of the promises they have given about it's use can and will be broken by the trustees dissolving the company. The thing you need to consider when you give data to a company is not "will these people misuse this", but "once these guys go bankrupt and sell the data to the highest bidder, can it be misused?". See, for example, how if your company holds a large mailing list, it will typically be sold to a spam operation for a few bucks. The minimum standard for giving serious personal information, like your DNA, to a company needs to be that the company receives a limited-time license to handle the data for the purposes they need to provide the service, and absolutely nothing more.
- j-wags 3y agoThis makes me wonder if there could be strong enough laws around protecting genetic info (for example penalties that pierce the corporate veil) that those with fiduciary responsibility to the company could argue that destroying the data is really in the shareholders' best interest. I'm completely uninformed in this area. Is there precedent for anything like this in the modern day?
- mjevans 3y agoUpgrade this to any medically adjacent data. ALL of the DNA data should be covered under HIPPA or something similar.
- kube-system 3y agoGenetic information is PHI and is already covered under HIPAA. The problem is that, like most companies, 23andMe isn't a HIPAA covered entity. Because they're not a healthcare provider or health insurer, it doesn't apply to them. Genetic information is also controlled by other laws such as GINA. So it is already some of the most controlled health data there is. But that's not a very high bar in the US.
- mfld 3y agoI would expect that you have a right to get your data deleted.
- epistasis 3y agoMy suspicion has always been that this sort of data–common SNPs from all comers and no specific phenotype collection–is not very useful for any sort of drug design. And if it is, publicly available data will be just as good as 23andMe's larger amount. It was a bet worth trying, IMHO, but always a risky bet. And with bio, you don't find out if your bets work for a decade or more, because the iteration cycle is 10x slower than software for businesses/consumers.
- timy2shoes 3y agoMy suspicion has been that SNP array data is not that useful for drug discovery. They’re targeting the most common/variable SNPs, which I suspect don’t have a large health effect (except for maybe late in life, otherwise how would they get passed down). I would suspect the more valuable targets would be rarer, or arise de novo (as is common in cancer, eg driver mutations).
- carbocation 3y agoThe effect size of common SNPs is not informative about the effect of drugging their related genes. For example, the common variants near HMG-CoA reductase have very small but significant (confidently nonzero) effects. Yet drugging HMG-CoA reductase can reduce LDL cholesterol by ~40-50% (statins).
- nextos 3y agodeCODE Genetics, whose history is very interesting and worth reading [1], was bought by Amgen based on this premise. Note, however, that SNPs like the one you pointed out are relatively infrequent. Amgen was expecting a two digit % improvement in their pharma pipeline by using GWAS insights. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics
- carbocation 3y ago> Note, however, that SNPs like the one you pointed out are relatively infrequent. If you mean that SNPs with small effect sizes don't always point to useful drug targets with big druggable effects, that is possible, but this remains an open question and is the subject of intensive research right now.
- hoistbypetard 3y agoI do too. That's why I've refused to use the kits I've been gifted... I assumed the fallback here was to build up a cache of data to sell. I'd be nice if they could be prevented from doing that, possibly by the court system.
- astrange 3y agoSelling it is not a problem for the same reason they can't make a profit from it. It's not worth much. (They do have valuable data, but it's the survey answers and friend and family connections. Nobody really cares you have a G at SNP 12213244243.)
- zamadatix 3y agoWell, nobody is really interested in the test to find out they have G at SNP 12213244243 either. They do it specifically to get the ancestry, health, and potential physical bias type information you mention - that's the only real data anyone is talking about when referencing the test. Plenty of companies would love to have that kind of data to target users with. The real killer would probably be around how useless healthcare regulation could make having most of that data. I'm not sure how far that really extends or what you manage to sign away by sending in your sample though.
- astrange 3y agoThat's kind of what I mean by it not being worth much though. Sure, leaks are embarrassing - the most common issue here is finding out that your dad isn't your real dad. But it's not useful for evil purposes because it's not /accurate/. It doesn't reveal all that much real additional information about your ancestry and health! Since it's decided before you're born: 1. its effects are mostly already expressed and people can know them either by looking at you or (like life insurance) by making you get a medical exam before buying their services. 2. it can get out of date for cultural reasons. Your biological ancestry isn't always how you behave, like if you're adopted. Whereas last name + zip code is a pretty good predictor already. But 23AndMe does have a lot of that information about their customers. The reason they have it is because they asked for it in surveys.
- dogman144 3y agoThere are 3-4 companies like Invitae (and not 23andMe) that genetic counselors send their tests to for analysis and treatment coordination with the MD. Like another comment said, I think the DNA data 23andMe gets from their swabs and analysis is likely inferior from a drug-dev standpoint vs. what the pro firms do linked with the genetic counseling teams. In that light, 23andMe's options don't look good. However, probably good news for the patient. As I was told by a genetic counselor at one of the main hospital systems that do this, a bulk of their work is rolling back expectations from patients who did 23AM first, and then when to a GC.
- jjtheblunt 3y agowhat's PE? (edit: private equity?)
- dmoy 3y agoYes you're correct, Private Equity.
- jjtheblunt 3y agothanks
- jonathankoren 3y ago> This is a damning indictment of Wojcicki's management of the company. I mean she was leader of YouTube. Why wouldn't she be able to develop a drug development strategy based on genomics? But hey, rich people can do anything right?
- lanstein 3y agoWrong person
- vrc 3y agoThat’s her sister of famed “owned the garage Google started in” lore. This is the sister that was married to Larry Page.
- SOVIETIC-BOSS88 3y agoI believe she was married to Brin.
- sahila 3y agoMarried to Sergey*.
- mylons 3y agosuch a dystopian outcome that peoples DNA and medical information is just going to be sold?
- notso411 3y ago[dead]
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoI want to learn the secret dark arts of VC capital raise on lies. I don't need the money but more for the hacking.
- nameless912 3y agoUnending confidence and carefully curated reality distortion fields. Having watched the CEO at a previous job do it, it's infuriating and a gigantic pain in the ass for engineers to have a leader lie to investors and then have to deal with the fallout as deadlines approach.
- lupire 3y agoTry marrying a billionaire.
- dikaio 3y agoAgree. Everyone should be requesting to have their information deleted from their platform.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoIt's all going to come out in discovery. She used to work for a hedge fund. Data collection and disregard for other peoples' privacy runs in the family.
- justinclift 3y ago> I worry that it will go to PE ... Or maybe Palantir.