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Drugmakers Are Set to Pay 23andMe Millions to Access Consumer DNA
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I made the mistake of having them sequence my DNA before the first Big Pharma deal with GSK, which took a lot of people by surprise. I’ve since made a point of feeding them as much disinformation as possible every time I’m on their site.
Be quite amusing if we could poison their well by persuading a great many people to send in samples from other life forms.
Probably easier, cheaper & faster to make their data unusable via other means though.
It is fairly easy to differenciate DNA samples from different species and exclude them. Since it has always been an issue to have contamination by foreign DNA (bacterias, fungus, virus, plancton, fauna and flora of all sorts, etc.), tools/methods/protocols are specifically made to quickly separate out (amplify the DNA we are interested in) from whatever is not to focus of the current study.
Moreover, a random anonymous sample without associated information can quickly be analysed and compared against large libraries of genome datasets/maps to ascertain and corroborate what it is from, closest species, even family trees of related inviduals and most importantly get an overview of multiple phenotype of interest.
From the day the full human genome map had been declared complete in 2003 (at 85% of the genome), research has only accelerated in improving the map while understanding the various functions of many different parts of our DNA.
So you're saying we need to edit our DNA before sending it in!
CRISPR to the rescue!
That was one of the first things they put in place when they started accepting samples from people: Detect and filter out every sample of non-human DNA to keep people from messing with their data set.
I am guessing this is only for the people who opted in to having their data shared for research.
That remains to be seen. I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
Exactly. I now trust them approximately as far as I can throw a bull.
That's still too far.
LOL! Agreed
It is exactly that.
Perhaps. “Research” was initially pitched as academic and non-profit research, which I was happy to help. Then selling my data to a for-profit with no warning was definitely Not Cool.
Almost all research is done by companies. New advances in science cost money, they need funding. Some of this funding comes from charities, but the majority comes from companies that hope to benefit in some way.