23andMe Review: A Novelty And The Way Forward [UPDATED]

The Results

I don’t think I’ve anticipated a medical report as much in my life, but there are some grains of salt one must take with such information:

This is very much a work in progress. 23andMe is tracking a lot of factors from the markers it reads in your code, but these are not conclusive, matter-of-fact things. There are some traits in which only a single marker is used with a single, expansive point of verified research as a citation. There are others in which several markers are checked, but they’ll give conflicting information, so virtually everything you’ll see here is probability. There’s a lot of information to paw through here, but new information is coming all the time from genetic research and even user-provided answers via surveys on the site. I don’t know if they sampled more information than required so that if new developments come, they’ll update you. That part seems a little murky, but it’s said that they take a look at 700,000 SNPs (markers) in the survey. You can elect, when creating your account, to allow 23andMe to store your sample for ten years in their BioBank at no additional charge. I did this in hopes of some distant future when they offer full genomic sequencing. Maybe they’ll just find something new with my code. The more people take these tests, the more information they’ll receive, so forth. Get your friends or loved ones a kit for their birthday or something.

Because of 23andMe’s still relatively small pen of information from North America and Europe, it becomes clear pretty quick that only specific genotypes are going to have a lot of information behind them. I’ll be delighted when they go international.

It’s not medical advice. Because genetics is still a relatively new science, and for reasons listed in the point above, it’s not incredibly reliable for anything beyond a few, broad specific cases. Even if you fill out every survey on the site, 23andMe simply doesn’t know enough about you or your lifestyle to make judgment calls to tell you about your illnesses or physical conditions. You’ll still need a doctor for that, but in the future, this kind of information could help them extensively in treating you.

You might not like what’s in there. In some worst case scenario, 23andMe will inform you that your parents aren’t who you think they are. Even though we’re learning much about genetics, there are many things science can understand about you through extensive research and your genes cannot tell a lie. There were three categories locked away behind an acknowledgement page before they released their information, namely the probability of developing breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. In the future, they will find more. Looking through my results, there was nothing that blew me away, but that’s not to say you couldn’t find some terrible, terrible secret in your genetics that could change your life.

That said, the information it did reveal to me was pretty incredible, if not a little obvious in spots.

23andMe divides their core findings into two groups: health and ancestry.

Health had a few surprises. I’m far more likelier than average to develop Alzheimer’s, which isn’t a surprise as my grandfather died of it a few years ago (his sister a few years before that). I have greater odds of developing diabetes (which, at the age of 28, hasn’t struck yet) and blood clots. I’m also more susceptible to various cancers of my digestive system, including esophageal, stomach, and colorectal. Being a fat kid, it surprised me that my muscle-developing genes were common amongst high-performance athletes, which suggests I could be a muscle junkie if I really wanted to. The findings lead me astray when it suggested I had a ‘common’ chance of developing male pattern baldness, which is simply incorrect. Both my brother and I experienced thinning hair from our early twenties, so it appears that’s a gap in 23andMe’s knowledge. The site was also able to accurately identify my blood type, eye color, and curliness of my hair purely from the code.

Ancestry provided fewer surprises, but 23andMe hasn’t crunched my detailed relationships, yet. Every single one of us has a tag of origin, called a haplogroup, passed down exclusively from our mothers (which is why only men can determine their father’s haplogroup, because it’s derived from the Y-chromosome). Using this, I was able to find that both my parents are from Europe (of course), but my mother’s group came much later it seems. My mother’s haplogroup (J) diverged from my dad’s (R) some 30,000 years ago and J stuck around the Arabian peninsula for a few thousand more years than my dad’s did. Per some of the snapshot information available, the site has me close to Stephen Colbert on my dad’s side and close to Food Network chef Mario Patali on both sides. 23andMe is going to need another week to crunch my information into their databases to determine who, of their current subscribers, is a close relative. When this information becomes available, I will update this article.

As I had pretty much determined, my ancestry is from northern Europe. The ancestry breakdown tool allows you to determine your origin amongst a pocket of countries, in my case, it looks to be somewhere between England, France, and Germany. Who knew we were so similar! Amongst my relatives, 23andMe found a number of 3rd to 5th cousins, apparently closer on my father’s side, with the closest matching me by 1.15% of my SNPs. They’re spread everywhere across the United States and Europe with a few matches scattered elsewhere in the world, including South Africa and India, which makes sense (British colonialism and all). It’s very interesting to see how all of these fragments fit together. I have yet to press any invitations to my fellow humans, but maybe I will in time…

Is It Worth It?

With the right goals in mind, 23andMe is the perfect purchase. This isn’t as tangible as a movie, a game, a television, or a new phone, it’s enlightenment. There’s really nothing tangible you can do with this information because of so many of the issues listed above. Genetics are only a starting point, they can’t determine if you’ll succumb to cancer or develop Type 2 diabetes. If I had the scratch, I’d buy a 23andMe kit for everyone I knew. Then they could link their accounts to me and we could all see how we all fit together. It’s the ultimate social network, but instead of providing an e-mail, you’re giving 23andMe your most intimate form of identification: DNA. Like a social network, it’ll only be as useful as the number of people contributing. Who knows, maybe your friends are closer relatives than you think.

It’s inevitable that we’ll be sequenced from birth and informed of every potential disease and trait from the womb and while that’s an exciting future, this is that first step. You won’t dwell for days over your results and if you’re knowledgeable to your health and ancestry already, you won’t find any earth-shattering information but, like running a screensaver to help SETI find alien signals or fold proteins, you’ll feel like you’re contributing to something greater.