Logo

Tapping a New Demographic

Apr 01, 2009

Blogger Daniel MacArthur says that 23andMe's latest move is "sheer marketing genius." The personal genomics company launched a service aimed at pregnant women and recruited a cadre of "mommy bloggers" to do it. At the Spittoon, Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki write that many mothers, expectant and otherwise, "prefer to carry out their pregnancies armed with as much knowledge as possible." Or, as MacArthur describes it, "Come for the enthralling conversations about cloth vs disposable; stay for the experience of comparing your weight gain in week 15 with hundreds of other expecting women; and hey, while you're here, why don't you get yourself a genome scan?" The Gene Sherpa, Steve Murphy, says it's a "BS PR move." He writes: "I like a lot of people am very mixed about this whole dump money into tests that may not be useful, but build the hype of genetic utility in order to 'educate.'"

Filed under

Genetic Research
Breaking News
The Scan

Study Finds Few FDA Post-Market Regulatory Actions Backed by Research, Public Assessments

A Yale University-led team examines in The BMJ safety signals from the US FDA Adverse Event Reporting System and whether they led to regulatory action.

Duke University Team Develops Programmable RNA Tool for Cell Editing

Researchers have developed an RNA-based editing tool that can target specific cells, as they describe in Nature.

Novel Gene Editing Approach for Treating Cystic Fibrosis

Researchers in Science Advances report on their development of a non-nuclease-based gene editing approach they hope to apply to treat cystic fibrosis.

Study Tracks Responses in Patients Pursuing Polygenic Risk Score Profiling

Using interviews, researchers in the European Journal of Human Genetics qualitatively assess individuals' motivations for, and experiences with, direct-to-consumer polygenic risk score testing.