How Do You Know When a DNA Test Is B.S.?
A company called Helix wants to sort through the pseudoscience in DNA tests, but it has its critics, too.
Recently, a DNA test appeared with a premise so far-fetched that its fate was profane and merciless ridicule. Soccer Genomics offers personalized, DNA-based training regimens to young players, and its goofy ad went viral amid internet outrage. It is, alas, only the most recent example of the growing field of sometimes-dubious lifestyle DNA tests.
“It’s a jungle out there,” says , a genomicist at the Scripps Research Institute. As DNA sequencing has gotten cheaper, a number of small companies have looked to fill niches around the two big consumer DNA-testing behemoths, 23andMe and AncestryDNA. These newer tests usually don’t offer disease-risk information, which would bring the—vague, occasionally informative, sometimes amusing.
