In case you haven't noticed. I dropped off the blog radar for a while. I had some growing to do of the practice and some streamlining. I read Daniel MacArthur's post with great interest this week. It describes clinical utility of 23andMe testing......
The one thing I haven't stopped doing is counselling patients on DTC Genomic reports.
Just yesterday I was consulting a very nice patient. They told me they just had to speak with a doctor because the report indicated that they were at increased risk of stomach and esophageal cancer. They had been up for several nights reading about it. Further, when brought to their PMD, the PMD smiled and didn't offer up any advice.
Well, first let me preface by saying, 23andMe's SNPs which they list 4 huge freaking stars of "CON"fidence for, on Esophageal and Stomach Cancer risk, while BTFW only ranking studies on Han Chinese. And only 2 studies at that.......
This report had this patient seriously concerned. Until of course I took a G-D Damn pedigree and found out they had ZERO, I repeat ZERO Asian ancestry/ethnicity, let alone Han Chinese....
The risk report from 23andSerge listed them as high risk. How in the world did that work?
(BTW, if you don't believe me, just ask and I will send you the time stamped pdfs, with name redacted of course)
You know why that worked? Because the brainchildren at the Google owned company forgot to put an ethnicity/ancestry filter on their reports. Instead they just felt that an asterisk would work just fine.....
Well Guess what 23andMe, you haven't changed at all. Even after the FDA got on your A$$. Your reports still are misleading and are causing undue angst.
Lucky for you, Myself and Dr Lubin are around to pick up after your mess......
Can you see why someone needs to look at and police these reports? This poor patient had serious concerns and when brought to a clinician who couldn't understand the SNP studies could end up with not needed endoscopies which would put the patient at risk. Primarily due to physician malpractice avoidance behavior?
Don't think that hasn't happened? Think Again.
The Sherpa Says: I am back again at it because clearly the millionaires with a penchant for DNA peddling and CPU coding can not get this right......Clearly a #FAIL
