In the autumn of 2007, Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki launched the era of pop genetics by going live with 23andme, their DNA testing startup. Two years ago, the commercialization of DNA by 23andme and others seemed to stun geneticists and the medical research community, despite years of scientists downloading genetic discoveries on public databases. Ethicists and the American Civil Liberties Union fretted about the privacy questions inherent in companies holding this data. "This information by itself gives a very incomplete picture about a person's health," says Steven Brenner, with Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division. "I believe that it will be useful, but there is a danger that people might misinterpret it or take it more seriously than they should at this stage of the science." Brenner suspects that there will be a division of genetic testing in the future between DNA that is, in his view, medical and the more recreational uses, like genetic information about ancestry. "My sense is that people will want information about disease in a medical setting," he says. More>
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