23andMe: an entirely avoidable disaster?

Enrique Dans

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Enrique Dans

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3 min read

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Mar 25, 2025

It’s not often one gets the chance to watch, in real time, a really good idea with commercial potential fall apart so disastrously as 23andMe.

Founded in April 2006, the company pioneered DNA testing: a saliva sample collected from its spit kit identified genetic markers using SNP genotyping that made it possible to isolate an individual’s medical traits, from more or less obvious characteristics right through to the risk of all kinds of diseases.

Aided by substantial investment from Google, whose Sergey Brin was married to the company’s founder, Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe was voted one of the best inventions of 2008 by Time magazine, launching it to fame and fortune.

But it soon ran into problems with the US FDA, which believed that users were, in many cases, not prepared for information of this type, and were likely to make bad decisions based on it. Much of the alarm was attributed to the so-called Jolie effect, the actress’s decision to undergo a double mastectomy after she discovered she was a carrier of the BRCA1 gene, which strongly increased her likelihood of suffering from breast cancer.

After several appeals, the FDA banned the company from providing information about the health of its users, which put it in competition with many other companies dedicated simply to providing information about genealogy. By reducing the information provided, it became attractive to a much smaller number of people, basically groups such as Orthodox Jews and some others who especially value information about their origin.

Matters were further complicated when the company took five months to notice and then admit that it had been hacked in April 2003 and the data of 6.9 million customers made available online. When your business consists of analyzing highly confidential information, weak cybersecurity is not something you cannot afford. Its valuation has fallen from a high of $6 billion to less than $50 million and it has been forced to lay off more than 200 people. Finally, on Saturday, it declared bankruptcy, with the founder leaving so as to try to bid for its assets and refloat it.

Meanwhile, there have been alarming media warning 23andMe customers of the importance of deleting their data, revoking all research consent, and ordering the…