The DNA testing company 23andMe is circling the drain, and it’s about damn time.
Earlier this week, 23andMe officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just as its CEO Anne Wojcicki stepped down from the position—the latest humiliations for a formerly thriving company once valued at $6 billion. Though it’s still possible that some version will outlast this financial turmoil, its days as a genetic testing juggernaut appear to be firmly over. Frankly, given the many mistakes and misleading promises 23andMe and similar companies have made throughout the years, it’s a well-deserved fate.
Shattered trust
Much attention has rightly been paid to the company’s abysmal handling of its customers’ data. Starting in April 2023, hackers gained access to the personal information of nearly 7 million customers, more than half of the company’s customers (the initial breach affected 14,000 accounts, which the hackers then used to access information from many others). Though the hackers weren’t directly privy to people’s DNA records, they were able to obtain names, birth years, and family tree information.
It took five months for the company to even notice the hack, and two months before it publicly admitted to the total scale of the breach. Along the way, the company attempted to lay the blame at its customers’ feet, scolding them for recycling passwords. To be clear, you should never reuse passwords—but the companies we trust with our data also have a responsibility to keep it secure.
The hack severely shook the public’s confidence in 23andMe and incurred a heavy cost. Last December, for instance, the company agreed to pay $30 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed against it for the breach. The company’s security failings are one thing, but the foundations of consumer genetics testing in general have always rested on shaky ground.
Overstated offerings
In 2010, four years after 23andMe first launched, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published an investigative report accusing the consumer DNA testing industry of regularly misleading the public. According to the report, companies often marketed these tests by falsely claiming they could accurately predict the chances of someone developing any number of medical conditions. In 2013, the Food and Drug Administration banned 23andMe for selling its own version of these personal genetics tests (tests focusing strictly on ancestry were still allowed).
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To its credit, 23andMe did retool its business model in response to the FDA. It eventually launched FDA-approved tests to reveal if someone carries genes linked to specific hereditary conditions (genes that could be passed on to their children), in addition to tests that provided insights into the risk of developing conditions like Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. Egregious false advertising in the DNA testing industry may have declined somewhat since the GAO report, but some companies are still being caught for deceiving their customers.
Put simply, though: most people don’t really benefit from these direct-to-consumer DNA tests, largely because our hereditary factors are usually only one piece of the very big puzzle that is our health. Our genes can influence our risk of acquiring type 2 diabetes, for instance, but factors like lack of exercise or obesity have a much greater impact. And the actual lifestyle advice given to people at higher genetic risk for diabetes should be the same as what’s given to everyone at higher risk: move more and eat a healthier diet.
Insufficient science
Scientists are continuing to find new links between our genetics and health, and occasionally discovering new genetic disorders. But we’re not currently at, and will likely never reach, a point where a printout of someone’s DNA can provide them with a precise road map to their health. And that’s assuming we’re getting accurate results in the first place. A 2018 study found that up to 40% of genetic variants marked as potentially worrying in a person’s raw genetic data were actually false positives, for instance.
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Speaking of inaccuracies, ancestry testing has its problems, too. The genetic markers commonly used to assess both a person’s health and heritage by these companies are subject to some interpretation, and it’s possible that two companies, given your DNA, will pop out two markedly different assessments of your ancestry (even twins can get different results from the same company).
I haven’t even gotten into the recent phenomenon of law enforcement agencies starting to use data from others’ DNA testing results to track down related crime suspects. While many people are supportive of this use, plenty aren’t. A 2020 Pew survey found support split down the middle.
At the end of the day, it seems that 23andMe’s downfall wasn’t just caused by the 2023 hack, but by its own irrelevancy. As Gizmodo has already noted, the company has repeatedly tried to pivot to new sources of sustainable revenue, from selling $1,000-a-year subscriptions marketed as healthcare to more recently making plans to further mine its customers’ DNA data for scientific research.
There’s only so much you can learn from a consumer DNA test, and it appears there’s also only so much money you can make from selling them to the public. While I won’t begrudge people for being curious about their genetics, my opinion when asked is the same as it’s been for years: don’t take any DNA tests that you and your doctors haven’t agreed is right for you. And if you’re a 23andMe customer, it might be wise to delete your account—just be aware that you can’t entirely scrub your data with them.
