Information is the most valuable resource on Earth. We shed data from everything that we do, and megalithic corporations hoover it up. With that, they know us better than we know ourselves, and the information we readily give up is used to upsell to us, and manipulate our political and personal views. We are users of social media, but in reality we are the product. Google’s mission was never simply to provide a search engine; it was to curate the world’s information. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the commercial genetic testing company 23andMe was cofounded by Anne Wojcicki, once the wife of one of the Google creators; 23andMe’s mission was to curate the single richest dataset in the known universe, the one you carry around in your cells: your genome.
23andMe provided information purporting to be about your personal health and ancestry. All you had to do was spit in a tube and give them some money, and in return you’d get a very glossy map of your genetic genealogy, and some info on the probability that you like the taste of coriander, or your skin flushes when you’re drunk, or whether you have sticky or wet earwax, or your eye colour – things you might have already known, if you have ever looked in a mirror, or stuck your finger in your ear. If you look carefully, they did give solid info on the science underlying the results, but who reads the small print?
Your DNA is your most private data. The billions of letters of genetic code in your cells are unique to you, and always will be, in the whole history and future of humankind, even if you are an identical twin. It contains the history of your family, of our species, and of life on Earth. It harbours the most personal conceivable information about your family, your life and health. And that is what 23andMe wanted.
The company has just filed for bankruptcy, and this does not sadden me. It didn’t invent direct-to-consumer genomics, but it made big data big business. The genius of its business model was not simply to get you to volunteer this personal data to a private company, but to persuade you to actually pay to give it to them. It then commercialised your DNA by selling it on to pharmaceutical companies, which would use it to develop drugs, ultimately for profit. It was the type of racket that a mob boss might look on and say: “And this is legal?” There was always an opportunity to opt out, but most people did not, because who reads the small print? And what did you get in exchange? A scientific trinket.
There were good news stories too – tales of lost relatives being found, or previously unknown parents being identified. I discovered an unknown branch of Jewish ancestry, which petered out six generations ago. The scientists at 23andMe published some studies that used customers’ data to uncover lost information on transatlantic slavery, and this was only possible because they were sitting on one of the largest collections of human genomes in existence.
But the main interest came from people who thought they were paying to answer the nebulous question of where they came from. The trouble is: it’s an empty promise. There is no method for identifying the geographical origin of your ancestors using genetics. Your ancestors about 50 generations back are from all over the world, and besides, biology does not bestow membership to a tribe or clan or people or country. What 23andMe was actually doing was comparing your DNA to that of other paying customers, and matching up where they live today, and inferring that you have ancestors in that location. It kind of works, but is mostly meaningless. When the data lets you believe that you are 37% German, or 18% Spanish, or whatever, it might feel fun, but of course there is no way of being 37% German. White supremacists loved this type of service too because – locked into their scientifically ignorant ideology – they believed it would reveal some sort of racial purity. Even when testing uncovered previously unknown ancestry from people they deem inferior, they would often attribute the results to a Jewish conspiracy.
As for the health information it provided, the results are also of profoundly limited use, because the tests are not designed to diagnose medical conditions, and the genetic variants anaylsed as part of the service are derived from population-level statistics, which are not particularly informative to individuals. I discovered that I have a genetic variant that at a population level is associated with a slightly higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Knowing this neither bothers me nor has prompted a change in my behaviour. It does not mean that I will get Alzheimer’s, and if you don’t have that same variant it doesn’t mean you won’t.
DNA is not fate. 23andMe was trading on ignorance of how the genome actually works, and perpetuating a deterministic view of genetics that is outmoded and wrong.
Maybe people fell out of love with this fad because what are you meant to do with the reports anyway? Sure, some people did find out new things about their family ties. But most of the millions of paying customers discovered nothing of note. Maybe punters got wise to the weakness of the claims the glossy marketing made, such as “root for your roots” – a laughable attempt to sell testing kits to football fans during the 2018 World Cup.
And then there was the data breach. In 2023, 23andMe was hacked – 7 million customers’ most private data was leaked, and Ashkenazi Jewish customers’ data was put on sale on the dark web. You paid a company to store your data, and it failed.
So, for all the punters who were seduced by the promise of some vaguely sciencey storytelling, you might want to look at deleting your data while 23andMe is in financial turmoil. The lessons are clear: understand the science and check the small print. You were never customers; you were always the product.
