This process sounds like it's half a step away from that. The half-step being that they only mention testing the parents, and then the process permits a degree of hypothesizing about possible children. Meanwhile, how hard would it be to test an embryo in utero, and then make a shallow, superficial decision about the pregnancy?
The process is practical and ethical, when considering it's utility for assessing the risk of inherited, incurable diseases tied to varying combinations of dominant or recessive genes, but it's a flimsy assumption that it will solely be used for only those scenarios.
There will be couples with known risk factors, who will want to roll the dice and try anyway, because they love eachother and want a family, and then they check their pregnancy in utero for things like downs syndrome. But then, if you have the options in front of you, why not check out other characteristics too?
And then, if couple A was allowed to do that, and this is a business, after all... Why not couple B? This couple who has no life threatening conditions or genetic combinations, but has the money, and the confidentialitiy of protected health information laws shrouding their decisions in secrecy.
In 20 years, don't be surprised when a certain cross-section of humanity suddenly looks strikingly different, but without any obvious explanation.
Also, there are still a great many people who are very suspicious of any new medical technology and would not want to take any risks when it comes to a child.
There's a scene from the movie Gattaca where Ethan Hawke is cleaning everything from his desk and keyboard in order not to leave any "DNA traces". First saw that film 10+ years ago but it has always stuck with me.
Isn't this a direct violation of the principles of patents? A patent gives you protection to work on an invention, so that you have a monopoly to sell that invention and thus cover the costs of developing it. But here they have the patent, thus preventing anyone else selling the invention, but they are not selling the invention themselves.
I'm interested about law. (Not saying this is relevant to 23&me.) Can you patent a process for an illegal action? So, a business process that enables tax evasion (not avoidance)?
Until such time as there's a new owner or we're bought by Evil Co., etc.
Every time I read a best intentions phrase like that it reminds me of the company that promised, "Never to share your email with anyone. Ever."
Until they went bankrupt and one of the assets sold off was their customer database.
reminds me of the company that promised, "Never to share your email with anyone. Ever."
So no, there aren't any direct consequences of that, they have disclosed the "invention" in the actual patent text, and after patent expiry everybody will be able to use that patent text for their products if they wish so.
Can they say you definitely carry a gene for diabetes or lactose intolerance, for example, or do they just say you're at a higher chance of developing this? The website example given for carrier diseases looks so vague it's not worth bothering with ("You are a carrier of one or more infected conditions"... great, which ones!)
If they can give me a list of things I need to be mindful of in the future and, more importantly, why, I'd happily pay $99 for that. I.e; you've got this and that gene which leaves you susceptible to this condition which may lead to heart disease, etc. and we're %xx certain.
Does anyone have any experience of this kind of thing?
[1] http://www.ctrl-verlust.net/23andme-wie-ich-fur-todkrank-erk...
I have an account - for me it was worth it. It confirmed some "suspicions" I had about some of my families genetic predisposition.
It can show inherited conditions, and what genes you have (maybe 1 of the 4 markers for a condition).
They do show % certainty, and then they also show your chance of certain health risks vs the national average.
I'd be happy to explain more - I'll admit I haven't looked into all the results (or try to understand them), but I was happy with the $99 cost.
(Please, if someone with red hair reads this, no offense :-))
I really like 23andMe's product, although I dont like the idea of my genetic information being stored outside my country (different than US).
I hope the patent itself isn't as broad as they are painting it, statistical methods (algorithms) should never be a part of patent - they are too generic and based on mathematics.