[ExI] 23 and me (was Ashkenazi Longevity was Re: The Catholic Impact (was Re: Origin of ethics and morals))

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

On 12/19/11 11:26, PJ Manney wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I ran into 23 and me the other day, but their web site really sucks in
>> terms of telling you what they do. How many things can they tell you
>> about yourself? What sorts of things are they?
>>
>> Have many of you used their services? Has it seemed worthwhile to you?

[snipped]
> Anyone else have an opinion of 23 and Me for Kelly?

The number of things the site tells you directly is not very large
(couple of hundred?), and almost none of them, except for Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's (and breast cancer if you are a woman) have a huge impact
and are common (potential 2x odds of heart attack might count as huge
too).  The warfarin and clopidogrel sensitivity could also become useful
in practice. The information they give you directly consists mostly of
things you know ("you are likely to have blue eyes"), very rare carrier
status ("Limb-girdle Muscular Dystrophy variant absent"), some drug
response effects ("Typical response to Hepatitis C treatment") and about
a hundred disease risk odds going by SNP frequency correlation studies,
where either the odds multiplier is  between 0.7x and 1.4x so you don't
really care much, or the disease is rare enough or not-serious enough
that you don't care much.

Their most interesting feature for me is that they let you download the
SNPs so you can go and find associations on SNPedia or on new papers
yourself, so it becomes more of an entertainment assistant.  If you like
trawling through data for things like "1.2 times higher frequency of
macular degeneration" then you'll enjoy it and think it worthwhile.  If
you are into it, it can consume all your time. You soon become flooded
with information and become insensitive to any effect smaller than a 2
times higher frequency of something important. All that said, I have
changed my behaviour because of the results (cut out coffee), not sure
if rationally.

It would probably also be worthwhile if you are into genealogy.

For me, at the current $100 (I paid $500), it's quite a cheap puzzle
game per hour. I'd estimate 1000+ hours for completion.