23andme gets unwanted publicity
Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and husband of 23andme co-founder Anne Wojcicki, has announced that he has the gene for Parkinson’s disease and that his mother carries it to. She already has the disease, as did her aunt. Sergey has written about this on his new blog Too and it was picked up by the NY Times. Unlike the issues around Steve Jobs and his cancer, there’ll be no impact on Google’s business. If—and it’s only an “if”—Brin develops Parkinson’s it’ll be many many years from now. However, Parkinson’s is a very serious condition which people are right to dread—the father of one of my best friends has it, and his life is extremely grim.
Coincidentally I was doing my “spit” for 23andme just a few minutes ago when this story went on the NY Times site. So I can’t tell you about my results from them yet. I have though had my genome sequenced by Navigenics. Thus far none of the results have been compelling enough to make me actually do anything.
That of course is also Brin’s problem. At the moment there’s nothing he can actually do. In Genomics diagnosis is now running far far ahead of capacity for treatment.
But the hope of services like 23andme, Navigenics, DeCodeMe, and others aimed at promoting cures and treatments like CollabRx and Cure Together, is that the body of knowledge from both genomics and overall patient experiences will advance fast enough that the current situation of “more diagnosis with less ability to change the outcome” will slowly change to one where knowing your likely health future will help you avert some of the worse consequences.
Let’s hope so for Sergey’s sake and all of ours.
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