The deadline for responding to California's cease-and-desist letters passed last week, and it's shaping up to be an interesting time. Of the 13 companies targeted, several have already packed up, while two biggies have decided to put up a fight. In a letter sent to Wired, 23andMe claims that it's doing the right thing already, since its testing is conducted in an CLIA-certified lab under the eye of a licensed physician. Navigenics has taken a different tack, saying that it doesn't actually deal with DNA -- it analyzes data.
Daniel MacArthur sees many possible outcomes, but the most promising for the industry would be for the big players to tighten up their acts. "This is probably the best outcome we can hope for -- consumers still have the freedom to analyze their own genome without asking their doctor's permission, the department walks away with a sense that the industry has been cleaned up, and the science-free scammers that blight the industry are dealt an important blow," he writes at Genetic Future.