👎 Planning to give 23andMe or AncestryDNA kits this Christmas? Read this first.

Bookmarked Planning to give 23andMe or AncestryDNA kits this Christmas? Read this first. by Lisa Schencker (chicagotribune.com)

Are DNA test kits good presents? Genetic tests can give a lot of answers, but also raise serious questions.

It feels like DNA is just the next goldmine of ‘big data’ to be scrapped (see Spotify and culture). The world of things makes so much possible, but I wonder what happens when everyone has been mapped and we cannot take it back.

Marginalia

Consideration before wrapping up the kits as gifts: privacy concerns. 23andMe raised eyebrows earlier this year when pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline announced that it had invested $300 million in 23andMe as part of a collaboration aimed at developing new medications using 23andMe’s data. The companies plan to share in the proceeds from any new medications or treatments that come out of the partnership.