[ExI] FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service

spike spike66 at att.net
Fri Nov 29 18:32:39 UTC 2013


 

 

>.. On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
.

 

>.Perhaps they should take a page from the book used by the sex toys
industry.

 

Hmmmmm, OK.  {8-]  But don't actually TAKE the page, that would ruin one of
my favorite books.  

 

 

>.All they would have to do is say, "This is for entertainment purposes
only. Not meant to really diagnose a damn thing." .

 

Kelly I think you are onto a good idea here.  

 

 

>.After all, if a vibrating dildo is not a medical device, then a swab in
the mouth should not be either, so long as they don't make any real medical
claims about it. -Kelly

 

Ja, and keep in mind the spit kit doesn't actually have any swab or anything
that goes into the mouth.  I am not sure about the sex toy catalog in that
regard, but the 23 kit is just a test tube full stop.  If it did have a
swab, that would be possibly a legitimate objection by the FDA, since 23
would be responsible for the cleanliness of the swab.  It might be more
analogous to the vitamin industry, which the Feds will mostly leave alone if
they don't make too many claims about what their products do.

 

I can't imagine how they figure the spit kit is a medical device.  It feels
too much like a power grab on the part of the FDA.  If they manage to
require 23andMe to do efficacy testing, there is no way the price of the
kits can stay below the magic 100 dollar mark, and think of it this way: 100
bucks is a magic number for so many reasons: we don't much hesitate to spend
that much for birthday and Newtonmas gifts for friends and family, for a lot
of us.  It is a good middle-class America threshold expense level for gifts,
a psychological imaginary fence: all two digit numbers are fair game for
gifts.  So if the FDA raises that price even a couple bucks, it would have
enormous impact on the business.  23andMe is a perfect example of an
enterprise which becomes more valuable as more people participate in it.  A
good low-end DNA service is just what we need somewhere.

 

On another topic:

 

>. While not as immediately dismissive of the entire cold fusion phenomenon
as Spike, one should be aware that this failure could have been a result of
chemistry based heat, not cold fusion produced heat.

 

Kelly I want to save my five daily posts by responding here.  Regarding cold
fusion and my skepticism on that topic: if cold fusion is real, then
everything we thought we knew about nuclear chemistry is wrong.  The
evidence needed for me to take seriously that farfetched idea is waaaay
above anything that has been offered to date, way above.  What really makes
me confident in my doubt is the notion that chemistry can somehow affect the
way a nucleus behaves.  That strains my imagination well beyond the breaking
point.  Those wispy little electrons flying around way out there at a
nanometer or more really cannot even find that compact knot of mass way down
there at the femtometer scale, never mind have some kind of voodoo influence
on it.

 

Regarding bitcoin, that whole notion was believable to me from the first
time I heard it, because Prime95 was loosely analogous to bitcoins: we had
all these computers fishing around looking for Mersenne Primes, sorta like
the way bitcoin miners do.  Anyone who found one was at least a temporary
world record holder for the discoverer of the largest known prime number,
and went on a short list with Euler and some of the greatest mathematicians
in history.  If you aren't a geek and don't care about that stuff, you could
quietly offer to sell the number to someone who would pay a looootta lotta
money for it.  So in a way Prime95 was a proto Bitcoin, sorta.

 

spike

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