Cashing in on your genes
By Mark Henderson,
The Times
| 01. 07. 2010
Spitting is not an activity that has traditionally carried much social cachet. Yet at New York Fashion Week and the Davos World Economic Forum two years ago, an invitation to drool into a tube became one of the hottest tickets around. For Hollywood celebrities and business executives alike, the new place to see and be seen was at a "spit party".
At this 21st-century take on the Tupperware party guests would hand over a little saliva (and a few hundred dollars) to a Silicon Valley start-up called 23andMe. After the cocktails had slipped down the company would extract DNA from the VIP spittle to assess its new customers' chances of developing a hundred or so medical conditions and physical traits, from breast cancer to baldness.
The idea was one whose time seemed to have come. As science started to reveal how genetic influences shape our health, so a new breed of business was taking DNA out of the laboratory and turning it into a glamorous consumer product. Anne Wojcicki and Linda Avey, the telegenic founders of 23andMe, were soon extolling...
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The Center for Genetics and Society is delighted to recommend the current edition of GMWatch Review – Number 589. UK-based GMWatch, a long-standing ally, was founded in 1998 by Jonathan Matthews as an independent organization seeking to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the GMO industry and its supporters. Matthews and Claire Robinson are its directors and managing editors.
CGS works to ensure that social justice, equity, human rights, and democratic governance are front...