khomenko

that. there are no real parallels here.

"Customers who purchased kits before November 22, 2013 will continue to have access to all the reports they’ve always had."

Everyone who has ordered since November 22nd is offered a refund. The details are on the website and will come in the email. Have some faith, dude. Of course they have to do that.

Yeah, you should be OK.

Yes, for the mendelian ones that can be inferred in a relatively straightforward way from the raw data. Not really, for the more complicated risk assessments.

It's a chicken and egg problem. The more people like you purchase the service, the less European it will become. It has made huge strides in the last couple of years, but there is a way to go still.

It's a mistake to infer that this means "regular" 23andMe results are similarly affected. The exome project was clearly labeled as a research one and the data was returned with no guarantees whatsoever. The "regular" 23andMe SNPs go through a multitude of comprehensive checks before they are used in reports. Not to say that occasional issues don't crop up, but it's apples and oranges.

Edit: I was the first engineer at 23andMe, so I have a decent idea about what's involved in the analysis and quality control.

Indeed. Singe Payer + Universal Coverage = FTW.

You can. Insurance spreads risk across population pools. You have to carve out those pools somehow, so you use broad variables like age and gender. The problem is genetic information has potential to make the pools too small.