Screenshot of a video for 23andMe's national ad campaign that's since been pulled, from the company's blog
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The company’s website boasts that its kit “reports on 240+ health conditions and traits,” and its new national television ad campaign clearly makes health claims about its genetic risk testing. A promotional video on its YouTube page, for which the firm has disabled embedding, shows a user touting 23andMe's health benefits unequivocally. "I do say 23andMe saved my life," he says.According to the FDA, these diagnostic interpretations of consumer DNA make the Personal Genome Service a medical device, and thus subject to the agency’s regulations. The problem is that 23andMe has failed to provide adequate evidence that its statistical genetic analyses are actually statistically sound.“The key issue here is that they are making claims about their product that are not backed up by science,” Ankcorn told Motherboard. “The results can be highly inaccurate, and for a lot of people, especially if the test tells them they are at risk for future health problems, the test is a lot more trouble than it’s worth.”A promotional video shows a user touting 23andMe's health benefits unequivocally. "I do say 23andMe saved my life," he says.
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23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, via Thomas Hawk/Flickr
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In the wake of the FDA’s action, supporters of consumer genomics have accused the government of overreach, and questioned whether the agency should even be regulating personal genetic tests—and the information they provide to consumers—as medical devices.As political blogger Ezra Klein noted in his column for Bloomberg View on Thursday, the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act was passed in 1938, and the section on medical devices was last updated in 1975—long before personal genetic testing, and underlying ideas about personalized medicine, came on to the scene. Given that 23andMe is fundamentally about big data genetics, the value of the product today is not necessarily indicative of what the value could be in 10 years.“Once you have the data, 23andMe does actually become the Google of personalized health care." — 23andMe board member Patrick Chung
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