23andme.com, anyone tried it?

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e-Hustler
Dec 5, 2009
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Wonder if anyone here tried this service? I looked at a sample report and it looks pretty neat. Basically you send a sample of your saliva and they build a detailed DNA report for you, including your risk level for each major disease.
 


Do you really want to know if you might get a genetic disorder in 10 or 15 years? Now maybe checking to see if your the real babydaddy that may be a good reason to use something like this
 
^ Well to be honest I don't wanna know, but it's still an amazing idea. Apparently it also tells you where you come from (ethnically speaking) and if you have any DNA relatives/cousins.
 
^ Well to be honest I don't wanna know, but it's still an amazing idea. Apparently it also tells you where you come from (ethnically speaking) and if you have any DNA relatives/cousins.

Its a cool idea and all and I think its great that people have access to stuff like this, but they are going to be selling to hypochondriacs and people will learn about the "potential" disease and disorders and then live their lives in fear and probably fail to live up to their potential. For me its just better off not knowing what may or may not happen at some undetermined point in the future especially if its something not curable
 
it's cool.

I did it. I thought it was pretty cool. A lot of people use it for other things like genealogy. And they don't ever tell you that you're going to get something. It's always you have a "chance" or, really, what they say is "X people with your genotype out of 100 people got Y disease." Usually it's something like 5 or 10 unless you're talking about diabetes in which case it's like 30-something (me!). Anyway, if you want to check it out I just got the latest coupon and they let anyone use the coupons even though it's "my" coupon, which is weird. Anyone, multiple times so send it wherever you want.


Send it, post it, like it - share it every way you can!

Here's your $23 off link to share:
http://www.23andMe.com/a/ff1/a1d4r

Offer Expires: Dec. 27th, 2011
 
I think that $23 is well worth the price of knowing what diseases you're at high risk for... But I also feel that this could be a MAJOR privacy fuckup... And something best done by your doctor, not a 3rd party small biz.
 
Some of this is VERY spurious. It's fine for well established "single locus" diseases like Cystic Fibrosis and BRCA breast cancer, but most diseases are multi-locus.

We still know most about what really causes most of the diseases listed. For example, with Parksinson's disease, there are at least TWENTY gene locii which have been found to have an effect on the lifetime risk so far. More are in the pipeline.

See:

Genetic Testing for Mental Disorders: Avoid 23andme, Navigenics, Others for Now | World of Psychology

It's fine as a bit of fun and an interesting insight into DNA, but the way they are marketing is a tad misleading.

EDIT: in fairness to them, they do include a paper on how they deal with multi locus risk. But given that most people think they have a reasonable chance of wining the lottery, can they really make sense of this?

https://23andme.https.internapcdn.n...01_Estimating_Genotype_Specific_Incidence.pdf
 
I think that $23 is well worth the price of knowing what diseases you're at high risk for... But I also feel that this could be a MAJOR privacy fuckup... And something best done by your doctor, not a 3rd party small biz.

especially when this "third party biz" happens to be owned by Sergey Brin's wife. :ugone2far:

That's one couple that has a little too much information for my liking.
 
especially when this "third party biz" happens to be owned by Sergey Brin's wife. :ugone2far:

That's one couple that has a little too much information for my liking.

Yeah seriously. Definitely do not want the Google algorithm indexing my DNA.
 
It's fine as a bit of fun and an interesting insight into DNA, but the way they are marketing is a tad misleading.

+1
Most diseases are far more complex than a single locus being affected and the combinatorial effects of multiple loci require too many samples (than is feasible to get at this moment) to have a meaningful predictive model. Apart from that there are the environmental, dietary and a host of other effects in addition to your genotype that affect your risks for a particular disease.

Still: it's fun to know about your genetic makeup!

ps as was already mentioned: humans are not really good at assessing risk/probabilities in a rational way. Monty Hall problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
ps as was already mentioned: humans are not really good at assessing risk/probabilities in a rational way. Monty Hall problem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can somebody explain to me this fucking Monty Hall problem because I don't get it, and I'm too hungover today to read that big ass article.

Problem: Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2 (instead of #1)?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

How can they say that switching doors gives you 2/3 chances of finding the car? The way I look at it, once you figure out that #3 has a goat in it, that still leaves you with a 50% chance of finding the damn car. Whether you switch your choice or not, does that really matter?
 
Look it's pretty fucking simple dude:

6ce5425dbfd0cfcc9937beed5e6e6201.png


So, obviously: Potatoes.

:thumbsup:

Edit: Damn that was an image fail, wasn't it?

Well in that case, I'd say the doors are 50/50 when the 3rd is revealed, and that trumps all. Vos Savant was a moron.
 
Can somebody explain to me this fucking Monty Hall problem because I don't get it, and I'm too hungover today to read that big ass article.

Problem: Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2 (instead of #1)?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

How can they say that switching doors gives you 2/3 chances of finding the car? The way I look at it, once you figure out that #3 has a goat in it, that still leaves you with a 50% chance of finding the damn car. Whether you switch your choice or not, does that really matter?

Seriously? ...

So you pick your door...
You have a 1/3 chance of picking the car, 2/3 of picking a goat.
The host has to remove a door now.
If you picked a goat, he will remove the other goat and the last door will be the car. If you picked the car, the last door will obviously be a goat.

So if you switch, you have a 2/3 chance, if you don't, 1/3.
 
So you pick your door...
You have a 1/3 chance of picking the car, 2/3 of picking a goat.
Wrong. That's an illusion.

The moment the host revealed a goat he changed the denominator from /3 to /2.

It immediately becomes 50/50 unless you still wish to include door #3 for your consideration for some stupid reason.