Personal DNA tests - scary or awesome?
March 22, 2008 by alex
The first… potentially. The second… heck yeah! Check out Mike Arrington’s “review” of 23 and Me’s consumer level (if said consumer has $1000 bucks to burn) DNA test.
You get some fun stuff:
Some of the information is just for fun - I have “wet earwax,” for example, and don’t have the “alcohol flush” gene that turns people’s faces red when they drink. I don’t detect odors as well as some people. Less usefully, 23andMe notifies me that I have brown eyes. I have a gene which makes people tall (I’m 6′4). I do not have a sweet tooth.
…and some not as fun stuff:
Then there is the more serious stuff. It turns out I have a gene that makes me substantially more likely to have lower back pain (something that has plagued my father all his life, but not me so far):
I have a higher than normal chance of getting Type 1 diabetes, but a lower than normal of getting Type 2. I have a lower than average chance of getting prostate cancer and Rheumatoid Arthritis. I do not have the genetic material that gives some people resistance to AIDS, although I do have a gene that makes it progress more slowly. I am not genetically resistant to Malaria. I have slightly increased memory performance.
You even get it all in a slickly-designed interface.
I think this stuff is absolutely fascinating.
Check out Mike Arrington’s Review + Results here.
(originally posted at everydayUX)
Tags: science
Posted in Thoughts
March 23rd, 2008 at 2:02 am
I am guessing you have probably seen this then.
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html
It’s more robust if you are a male submitting your dna.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I’d read Arrington’s review, but I already know way more about that guy than I’d like to.