While it’s difficult to imagine anyone saying they love their pharmaceutical company, it wouldn’t be crazy for the 8.8 million 23andMe customers who once absently checked a box saying yeah, sure, use my data for whatever, to feel like they’ve been bait-and-switched now that their genes are laying the groundwork for potential cancer cures.

Privacy advocates have been warning for years that the spit-tube deal is lopsided—that there aren’t enough legal protections on genetic data to justify trading DNA samples for answers about whether you’re predisposed to hate cilantro or what percent Swedish you are. DNA data, which contains information about you and your blood relatives, could be hacked, de-anonymized, or shared with the police. 23andMe’s pharma ambitions add a new dimension to these concerns. If Wojcicki keeps achieving her goals, customers might one day pay 23andMe to assess their disease risk and pay for a treatment it later develops based on their DNA. Why should one company hold the key to the world’s genetic code—and charge the rest of us handsomely for access to it?

Brown, K. V. (2021, November 4). All those 23andMe spit tests were part of a bigger plan. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-04/23andme-to-use-dna-tests-to-make-cancer-drugs