23andMe to Create Institutional Review Board
23andMe unofficially announced recently that it will be forming an institutional review board (IRB). IRBs are a necessary oversight committee for human biomedical research, so this development means that 23andMe is continuing to advance from its scrappy consumer novelty web service origins and towards responsible medical. Also, contrary to the fashionable pessimism due to the recent economy, the formation of an IRB suggests that 23andMe’s leadership anticipates its future operation for at least the next decade. I agree —particularly since 23andMe has a runway between “basically forever” and “forever” due to the demographics and personal aspirations of its founding team and investors.
I hope that these rumors are substantiated with an official announcement soon. Predictive medical information without corresponding medical accountability sets a toxic precedent for a systemic permission of consumer abuse. When efficacy is not enforced through medically actionable accountability, profiteers inundate the general public with bogus medical claims that divert resources from often more prosaic real health care. This abuse is particularly alarming because while American medicine is considered to be grossly expensive yet too often ineffective, Americans still spend a substantial fraction of health care dollars on alternative medicine which has no or little efficacy. Another “nutritional supplement” consumer marketing gold rush in genomic testing would be tragic, but a 23andMe IRB is a step in the right direction towards responsible genomic medicine.
Think Gene at Technorati
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