FDA Bans 23andme Personal Genetic Tests
By BBC,
BBC News [Quotes CGS's Marcy Darnovsky]
| 11. 26. 2013
Google-backed 23andme has been ordered to "immediately discontinue" selling its saliva-collection tests after failing to provide information to back its marketing claims.
The tests aims to show how personal genetic codes may affect future health.
The company said it would address concerns.
The start-up has been operating since 2006 and was co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
For $99 (£61), users receive a kit allowing them to take sample of saliva. This is sent to the company and in return users receive a readout of their genetic code.
The website promises reports on 254 health conditions and traits as well as offering to help people trace their genealogy.
Under FDA rules, the company must provide proof about how accurate its detection methods are as well as supplying the error rates from its personal genome service (PGS).
In a public letter the FDA said that 23andme had not supplied this information, despite increasing its marketing campaign and the scope of its tests.
"FDA is concerned about the public health consequences of inaccurate results from the PGS...
Related Articles
By Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times | 08.13.2026
Immigrants at Ellis Island undergoing a medical inspection | Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
In 1924, Congress sent a message to the world: We are no longer ready to take “your tired, your poor, your huddled...
What We Inherit by Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko; and Original Sin by Kathryn Paige Harden have a great deal in common, with substantial differences in style and emphasis. Both books attempt, in different ways, to show the reader just where current research into human genomics stands, where that might be going, and why the authors are interested. In short, the influence of genomic research on our societies is already large and seems likely to change them in ways...
By Dan Falk, Nautilus | 08.20.2026
The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some “right” combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the...
By Emily Packard Dawson and Lainie Friedman Ross, MedPage Today | 08.18.2026
Few things evoke a greater sense of desperation than a parent seeking an experimental treatment for their child. That desperation can make even extraordinary risks seem worth taking. This dynamic has come into stark relief after Mei, a 6-year-old girl...
