clock 00:00 The future comes in a small package: only a few pages 23andme with guidelines of the Company and a plastic container into which I shall spit. The cells that are included in my saliva can broken in the laboratory and their genetic material to be examined. On the internet I can then a few weeks later to look at the results: If I for example have a higher risk than other people have to suffer from Alzheimer’s, or whether certain drugs work for me only in high doses. The whole thing goes without doctor. Without consulting. In Germany this is actually prohibited by the law becomes.
But 23andme sitting in the U.S.. In the package that I make in a logistics center, is an address in Los Angeles. The genetics is globalized. I step out, stand on the road in the industrial area in Berlin-Schmargendorf and do my jacket. So strange, I think. I here – and my spit on his way to Hollywood
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exfoliated buccal cells in saliva contain my entire genome: A three billion limbs long chain, divided into 23 chromosomes. Three billion times either the molecule adenine, guanine, cytosine or thymine. A construction manual in 23 chapters, written with four letters. Comparing the genomes of two people, as 99.9 percent of these letters are identical. But those who are different, can reveal something about the individual.
After a week I get an email that my saliva sample has arrived in the laboratory. There, the genetic material is fished out of the cells into small pieces and then placed on a DNA chip. My genome is not sequenced letter by letter, that would still cost several thousand euros. Instead, about a million individual sites in the genome, called SNPs (pronounced snips) determines
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The question that should answer all the As, Cs, Gs and Ts, says: “What will happen?” We want to take a look into the future, we want to know what awaits us: baldness, Parkinson’s, breast cancer. And if at all possible, we want to prevent the worst. We believe that if we pull hard enough genetic material to the thread, then maybe we can all illness and all the suffering that life has in store for us unravel like an ugly sweater.
Numerous companies have made this promise to the business model, but not as successful as 23andme. The company was founded in 2006 and is financed in part by Google. In 2008 the magazine “Time” chose the gene test for invention of the year. About half a million people have now used it. Recently, the company lowered the price to $ 99. One million customers wanted to achieve the company said.
It is only once nothing will. On Thursday, the company has decided to pressure from the FDA drug safety authority not to provide more health information is now available. Many questions focus is thus again into focus: What can we ever been read out of the inheritance? How useful are those tests? And who should be allowed to make them?
After a few weeks my results are available. Under the heading “health risks” of all the diseases are listed, for which I should have an increased risk of: Coronary heart disease, gout, prostate cancer, celiac disease. My risk of developing diabetes, is, according to 23andme, for example, two percent, is twice as high as for the rest of the population. For this is my risk of developing rheumatism, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, or developing skin cancer, supposedly below average. But what does that really mean?
“I call bullshit genetics,” says Daniela Steinberger, a doctor of Human Genetics, which operates a Center for Human Genetics in Frankfurt. “These are not relevant information.” Although Common diseases such as diabetes, schizophrenia or multiple sclerosis usually arise from the interaction of environmental factors and genetic predisposition. But the search for individual gene variants that greatly increase the risk of these diseases has so far yielded little.
probably be hundreds of genes involved, each of which has only a small effect, says Markus Nöthen of the University of Bonn. If a majority of these variants one day be known, one could look at all the same time and possibly predict a significant portion of the risk. Until then, have genetic tests for these diseases hardly any significance.
In general, increase or reduce the risk gene variants known only by a few percentage points. Such weak effects are completely negligible addition to environmental factors such as age, body weight, or whether a person smokes, says Cecile Janssens from Emory University in Atlanta in the United States. Some of the tests are based on only a single genetic variant. “At the moment I have loud 23andme an increased risk for colon cancer,” she says. “You can easily imagine that it may be a lower risk if a second variant is known and that looks different.”
2009 sent the U.S. biologist Craig Venter and other researchers the saliva of five people to the genetic testing company 23andMe and Navigenics. The DNS data they received were almost identical, but the interpretation was not. Because the two companies involved different gene variants in their calculations, the test subjects were for some diseases conflicting results. So 23andme calculated for three of the five people an average risk for a heart attack, Navigenics calculated for the same three people a reduced risk. We saw something similar for psoriasis, diabetes and colon cancer from.
All this does not mean that the genome does not contain important information. Steinberger has developed a system that divides genetic information on its benefit in five categories. “Bullshit genetics” is category 1 At the other end of the scale, in category 5 are genetic changes in genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA 2, which lead to a high probability of serious illness.
A mutation in these genes may increase the risk of a woman developing breast cancer dramatically increase. The actress Angelina Jolie announced in May that she wears such an altered BRCA1 variant in their genome, and therefore amputated the breasts.
23andme examined the two genes. However, the company is testing only three mutations that occur especially frequently among Ashkenazi Jews. Other, much more frequent mutations they can not investigate because the company Myriad holds numerous patents for it explains Uta Francke, the medical department bei23andme headed to October.
women who get tested at 23andMe and get a negative result, therefore could imagine false sense of security, warns the geneticist Peter Propping. “It may be that a woman then leans back and thinks she bears no risk, there is no definitive information.”
other hand, if the result is positive, the question remains how reliable it is. 23andme has been a dual strategy: on the one hand is on the website of the company over and over again, the results of the tests are not suitable for diagnostic purposes. At the same time, the company has however highlighted the health benefits of its tests, campaigned under with television spots in which customers report how the diagnosis changed her life.
years went well. But now the FDA has asked in a letter 23andme suspend marketing of medical genetic testing immediately. The company still have not demonstrated that the tests are reliable. A false positive result for BRCA but could for example mean that a woman let unnecessarily remove her breasts. Uta Francke thinks this is absurd. “If someone from 23andme has a positive result, then go to the doctor but,” she says.
But 23andme has bowed to pressure. On Thursday, the company announced that for the time being to provide only information about the origin of a people as well as the raw data of DNA testing. Information relating to health would no longer supplied to it. Janssens finds the right. “I do not mind that companies offer such genetic testing,” she says. “But then the quality must be guaranteed as a clinical diagnosis.”
Steinberger considers the actions of the FDA is right. Human geneticists would however have to admit that “we can work with the existing instruments of the personal interview and with individual written findings no longer alone to create value.” In Germany there are 80 million people who might have an interest in their own genome to know and use for decisions, says Steinberger. “The idea that the legitimate interest of nearly 200 specialists in human genetics could be adequately served is naive.”
The doctor now offers numerous genetic tests over the Internet. Non-Category 1 Nor category 5 As she holds a personal consultation for mandatory. But in between there are numerous genes that could examine to have a clear benefit without moving people in existential angst. Factor V, for example,
When my father was in his late 20, he began to cough blood one day. The doctors found a blood clot and gave him blood-thinning agent. The treatment was successful, the episode was forgotten. It was not until 30 years later, after another dangerous blood clot had formed, the doctors found that my father carries a mutation in the gene encoding a clotting factor, factor V,. People with this mutation have an increased risk of a blood clot forms. Physical exercise and compression stockings can reduce the risk.
According to 23andme I have the factor V variant that is not inherited from my father. The same applies to some other mutations whose medical effect is known. “Most people who take the test are people who are worried, but no reason to have,” says Janssens.
clear but may be, that the genetic material of some people contains information that could be useful for them, says Steinberger. “Deprive people of this knowledge means that people are unnecessarily sick or even die.”
The more advanced the technology, the more genetic information will be available. Even in a few years the sequencing of the entire genome for average citizens could be an option. Then everyone could know all three billion letters of his possession and not just one million. In the gene sequence can then also doubled genes or repetitions of short sections recognize that can lead to diseases such as Huntington’s disease. And the further progresses, the genetics, the more information can be read out people from their heritage.
It is also about the question of how mature a patient who may be a citizen. “Welcome to you” is on the test kit sent to 23andme. “Everyone has a right to see what is in his possession and what we know about it today,” says Francke.
“Then you may also tomograph to the Christmas market and everyone can let herself shine through,” says propping. Everyone should have the right to know one’s genetic information. “But for the protection of consumers always a doctor should be there in between.”
yet are the questions as posing a test from 23andme, more interesting than the answers he provides. The question is how long.
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