BUSINESS I N S I G H TS
Body Count What if they had a GENOMICS REVOLUTION and nobody showed up? RICK MULLIN, C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAU
I HAD A BAD FEELING while riding the train
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plans to launch a similar service; and George Church, the founder of Knome, head of the Center to Boston on a recent Sunday afternoon. It was for Computational Genetics at Harvard, and a not a feeling of apprehension about the annual board member at 23andMe. The group easily fieldBio-IT World Conference & Expo I’d attend that ed questions regarding privacy and eugenics. week. I felt creeped-out by what I had done the A more challenging question was posed by previous Friday afternoon. Robert C. Green, director of the Alzheimer’s After more than a year of stonewalling, I’d finalDisease Clinical & Research Program at Bosly gone along on a family field trip to see “Bodies,” ton University School of Medicine. He asked an exhibit of plasticized, peeled, and dissected whether people will understand a map of their human bodies at the South Street Seaport in New genes and how getting a full genetic rundown York City. The exhibit has been in New York for will affect their behavior. Green also noted that nearly three years, where it initially caused a stir complex diseases involve interactions of mulover the fact that it includes plasticized, peeled, tiple genes that can’t be easily charted. Opinions and dissected human bodies. varied among panelists on the extent to which I was not really surprised when I arrived at genetics predetermine a person’s future. “Bodies” to find no sign of public protest—to Green told me after the event that he is “truly find that the wonders of science at the admisimpressed” with Avey and others who are maksion price of $20 had prevailed over the minority ing the initial push to move genomics from opinion that a peeled human body exhibit was laboratories into households. “I think they have anything other than cool. extraordinarily high goals and standards,” he said. “What people Yet the fascination also seemed to have subsided. The empty worry about is that the field will become the next nutraceuticals— admission-line barriers snaked like a small intestine between the a pseudoscience.” exhibit hall and Abercrombie & Fitch. We walked right in the front Avey, on the other hand, said she fears her work may become the door and had all the time we wanted for an unobstructed view of next genetically modified organisms—a field pilloried by the press what, close up, looked an awful lot like week-old boiled chicken. and activists to the extent that the public at large rejects it. I thought during the train ride to Boston about how little I’d connected with the explicit, indeed exhaustive, display of what I’m made of. It said nothing to me about my life. MY OWN FEAR is about distribution. If, in fact, the pioneers of geThree days later, I was seated in the auditorium of Boston’s nomic and personalized medicine are introducing the health care World Trade Center, where Linda Avey, cofounder of 23andMe, wave of the future, will that not selectively benefit a highly educated was giving her keynote address, describing a world in which the consumer able to afford the screening and deal with the data? The new pickup line at bars will be, “What’s your haplotype?” Again, easy answer is that preventive medicine will reduce health care costs that creeped-out feeling. and that screening services, subsidized at first by those who can afAvey’s company offers $1,000 genetic screenings that, in addition ford it, will become less expensive and more accessible. Church said to giving the customer data presumed useful for preventive health his group has already brought the price of its service down nearly four care, will show what percentage of his or her ancestors came from orders of magnitude from an initial $3 billion per scan since 2000. Asia, Africa, and Europe. The novelty and sciencey coolness of knowGreen, however, said there may be something to my fear. “We ing one’s genetic makeup is very much a sales pitch at 23andMe. don’t have very well distributed health care now,” he said, noting And Avey was pitching to the faithful at Bio-IT World, where that rates of heart attack and cancer are much higher among the an elite group of scientists and technologists, feeling poised at the poor. “Forget about genetics. We don’t have an even distribution of brink of a health care revolution, come to talk shop. Avey’s presenordinary prenatal care.” tation, however, was about exporting the revolution, giving the genUpon leaving the World Trade Center, my queasiness subsided eral public access to their genetic data at a relatively somewhat. Avey’s assertion that genetic information low cost. Another firm, Knome, based in Cambridge, describes “the core of who we are” seemed a lot weaker Mass., will charge $350,000 for a scan that covers 98% on the street, away from the enthusiastic scientists she of a person’s DNA, as opposed to 23andMe’s 0.02%. greeted from the stage as her “peeps.” I thought about “What people It’s time to move the science of genomics beyond how uninterested I am in the haplotype of people that worry about is academic elites and the walls of institutions, accordI meet and about how few people in New York City ing to Avey. “We want people to be actively engaged,” that the field will seemed interested in “Bodies” anymore. become the next she says. nutraceuticals—a Views expressed on this page are those of the author After her talk, Avey joined a panel that included Dietrich Stephan, cofounder of Navigenics, which pseudoscience.” and not necessarily those of ACS. W W W.C E N - O N L I N E .O RG
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