23andMe Step 2: Spitting In A Tube
Michael Arrington
32 comments »
Last week I was able to take the second step towards understanding my genetic trivia - the $1,000 23andMe kit I ordered on December 6 arrived.
I spent a few minutes reading the directions and then did as I was told - I spent 5 minutes or so spitting into the provided tube, mixing in a chemical that comes with the kit, and sealing it up for shipment. In 4-6 weeks, they say, I’ll get the results back and will know a little more about my essential me-ness.
It’s clear that the concerns I brought up in the last post about taking a sample from someone without their knowledge won’t work that well with 23andMe. The volume of spit required to complete the test is just too much not to raise someone’s suspicions.
And as luck would have it, I ran into co-founder Anne Wojcicki at a holiday party just a couple of hours after the spitting session. She said the 4-6 week window was the longest it would take to get back results, and that some people get them back in just a week or two. I asked her if she could do me a favor and make sure mine got done quickly. She politely declined, saying something about how their privacy protections make it impossible for her to single my sample out.
I also asked Anne how many kits have been purchased. I ran the question by her perfectly - I asked a string of easy questions that she answered quickly and then I snuck that one in (this almost always works when trying to get sensitive information out of entrepreneurs), but she was on the ball and her media training clicked in. No answer.
23andMe is also a very expensive social network. Account holders can share their genetic information with friends (or anyone really) and compare that information with respect to inherited traits, ancestry and global similarity.
I’ll post again when the test results come in. More photos from the test are here.
Side note: I also ran into photographer Lane Hartwell at the party last night. Boy was that an uncomfortable conversation.
Interesting but I don’t really see the urgent need to get this done. There are 5 “genetic markers” coming out of Africa that we all belong to, it will simply help isolate which one but on the grand schemes of things, don’t really see the value other then novelty.
Jon
It’s new, therefore I need to test it out.
Mike, what is this article about?
What info is this providing readers with?
You’re essentially repeating what you said last time in my opinion.
Apparently there is a gene that controls your compatibility with caffeine. If the gene is in the right state, you may be %50 percent less likely to get a heart attack, on the other hand, if the gene is not in your favor you may have an increased chance of getting a heart attack by %50! Basically if you are a coffee drinker this gene will either cure you or kill you.
Chris R - isn’t there some other blog you could read?
more details on the Lane conversation, please!
Mike - did the kit provide any guidance on how to interpret the results when they arrive? Would one expect to take these results to a geneticist (or similar) for consultation?
I’m trying to grasp the practical utility of the test. Also, as an aside, the CSS rollovers on the 23andme site look pretty horrible on Safari. And I mean __horrible__.
“Chris R - isn’t there some other blog you could read?”
fine
“24″ TV show??!? Can Jack Bauer hunt these things?
I’ve been blogging my 23andMe experience over on http://www.wingedpig.com
Mark
gilltots - Lane said a few things off record that I won’t repeat. My general impression is that she is confused and scared, but also very angry and self righteous. My guess is her lawyer has gotten her all riled up and thinking she’s in the right.
re: Side Note.
Mike, on the Hartwell thread, many readers were upset at the way you characterized the issue, the way you cavalierly treated her concerns, and the immaturity level in the comments, as Mike Doeff wrote, s now “just a notch higher than Digg.”
Do you have a response?
Jon
Mike, do yourself a favor don’t try it…. Cancel the test.
I think this product would scare shit everyone.
What if you discover your great great grandfather was memeber of nazi party?
What if you discover your great great great grandfather was billy the kid?
What if you discover your great great great grandfather join stalin murder club?
These things can hurt feelings…
Jon - I consider what Lane did as anti-community and overly aggressive. That video was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to her career, and she did exactly the wrong thing in sending a take down notice. People who abuse copyright law need to be called on it.
Mike, why are you doing?? I’m serious…
Mike, My visionary. Use pit bull or dog saliva… Please trick Anne & her scientist. Tell her I want name. I want to see if “evolution versus creation” result.
Well, your *community* (in the person of Joseph Hayden) felt you had made a quick hash of the issues by consulting only one lawyer. Your community (in the person of Amie Gillingham) felt that people would have had different talking points if the photographer had a higher profile and the output was less popular. Your community (in the name of Mike Doeff) felt the level of discource was disgraceful.
From these names, you see, it’s not an XX v. XY issue as you suggested to Shelley.
I don’t know if I’m really in the TC community. I come here on rare occasion, usually when something hits the fan. The problem is that with the non-registration, you trade off quality for quantity. Maybe that’s good for your ads, but that means less people *read* the comments, and thus less people see the good stuff *from* the comments. Isn’t that what the media revolution was supposed to be about? Your readers know more than you– but only if you recognize that?
Hey, I thought it was a fun video, and hey, I am still viewing it on DailyMotion. When I first heard that it got pulled, I was disappointed. But in conflict comes opportunity. Most fair use cases are usually Big Media vs. the little guy, and they’re usually open-and-shut either way. This case involves two small players. I’m betting the fair use legal community (which hasn’t gotten involved in this yet) might be split on this.
I love the idea of know all about your DNA. For only a grand, it seams very tempting.
Mike, I still have about $700 to raise in donations before I can fill my 23andMe tube with saliva. Good luck on the results!
I don’t know if Lane Hartwell is taking the right approach to the issue of her photo in the video (which I enjoyed, like everyone else), but I thought Michael’s post on the issue was ignorant and insensitive, with zero nuance — just a “waah! selfish photographer invokes copyright and takes away my video! waah!”.
But hey, let’s make sure we represent only one side, and don’t ask the other person for their perspective at all. Bring up “lawyers” so that the knuckle-dragging commenters can hang the “bitch” to dry for her horrible photography and sense of entitlement.
Like I said, I don’t know that she’s going about things the proper way, but she didn’t deserve to “crunched” up her *ss by the eunuchs around here. Pure poetic justice to be confronted by the subject of your hatchet job a day later. I wish the squirming could have been videotaped.
Wayne, with 23andMe, you don’t get your entire genome sequenced. Just a bit under 600k base pairs. The hope is that those points, called SNPs, correspond to a majority of the defects that cause diseases (or traits). I’m still going through my results, so I don’t know how successful 23andMe was in picking the right SNPs.
The price is tempting but do I want my genetic blueprint residing in someone’s database. Who knows where my info will end up and what it can be used for.
Why does this upset you people so much! MS employees are required to take a full genetic battery before employment!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Max - what side am I supposed to present, if not the one I believe is correct?
Just imagine what would have been said if it was my photo, and I had been the one to send the DMCA notice to youtube…
Speaking of copyright law and photographers, what happened with that Figueroa character ?
boomer narcissists would be my guess for 23’s target market… and genetic structure is quite gross-level when compared to the subtleties of consciousness… won’t, can’t, tell anything about peace of mind…
ms. hartwell, keep shooting good photos, i like your site, never would have known who you were except for the steam…. life in the fishbowl…. just smile, is always good advice….
I just wondering what could be the meaning of 23 in 23andMe?
“I’ll get the results back and will know a little more about my essential me-ness.”
In the same way that you can know about the Mona Lisa by reading a printout of the colour value of each pixel of a digital scan, or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by reading it in Parson’s code. I like to think that we are more than the sum of our DNA.
Shame the test hadn’t come back a few weeks earlier though, you could have told Ms Hartwell “I’m sorry, but my genetic code makes me predisposed to amateur lawyering.”
Gee Mike, what a great post. I think this is one of your best ever.
I can’t wait to read your next post about how you sealed the envelope and took the sample out to the mailbox.
“Mike, what is this article about?
What info is this providing readers with?
You’re essentially repeating what you said last time in my opinion.”
It sounds like google has it’s hand firmly planted in this guys ass. Jeff Dunham couldn’t pull off a show this good.