Gene test mix-up brings scrutiny to industry
By Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera,
San Francisco Chronicle
| 06. 11. 2010
[Quotes CGS's Jesse Reynolds]
Last week, retired marketing specialist Nora Probasco called her brother with a half-serious, half-joking question: Was she adopted?
The issue came up after the 59-year-old genealogy hobbyist from Louisville, Ky., received the results of a test she took through 23andMe, a Google-backed firm that allows people to learn more about their ancestry and some medical conditions through DNA analysis.
"I was shocked," she said. "What it came down to, the way I know to read them, is that my mom is not my mom."
To her relief, it turned out to be a mistake. Last Friday, the Mountain View firm acknowledged in a post on its Web site that it mixed up the samples of 96 clients and sent them the wrong ones. The company corrected the mistake relatively quickly, but observers see the potential for similar errors that could lead individuals to make ill-informed decisions regarding their health.
The company, which was founded in 2006, said in an e-mail that the mistake occurred when a tray with 96 samples was misplaced. The company added that new procedures have been...
Related Articles
Cathy Tie seems to be good at starting businesses but not so dedicated to maintaining them. CGS, like many others, first heard of her thanks to Caiwei Chen and Antonio Regalado in MIT Technology Review, May 2025, as the partner (perhaps bride) of the notorious Chinese scientist He Jiankui, described in the headline as “China’s Frankenstein.” He prefers “Chinese Darwin.” She ran his Twitter account for a while, contributing such gems as:
Get in luddite, we’re going gene editing...
By Laura DeFrancesco, Nature Biotechnology | 03.17.2026
The first gene editors designed to fix genetic lesions in mutation-agnostic ways are poised to enter the clinic. Tessera Therapeutics and Alltrna, two Flagship Pioneering-funded companies, are gearing up to test novel genetic medicines in humans. Tessera received regulatory clearance...
By Darren Incorvaia, Fierce Biotech | 03.11.2026
A new method for safely inserting large chunks of DNA into genomes has now measured up in mice, potentially paving the way for the next generation of gene editing medicines.
The approach, which is described in a Nature paper...
By Carolyn Riley Chapman and Nirvan Bhatia, Hastings Bioethics Forum | 03.12.2026
Last year, researchers saved an infant named KJ from a life-threatening rare metabolic disorder using a customized gene editing therapy. This was the first time that an individualized gene therapy was used to treat a human patient, and it has...
