Genetic surveillance company 23andMe, once a $6bn prospect, is now a penny stock on the verge of doom. So "what happens to all its DNA data?" asks NPR.
As 23andMe struggles for survival, customers like Wiles have one pressing question: What is the company's plan for all the data it has collected since it was founded in 2006?
"I absolutely think this needs to be clarified," Wiles said. "The company has undergone so many changes and so much turmoil that they need to figure out what they're doing as a company. But when it comes to my genetic data, I really want to know what they plan on doing."
The story's first sentence is about someone "finally getting around to it," as if paying 23andMe to take your genetic data and cough up your pseudoscientific ethnicity score is a social obligation like mowing the lawn. That the company's marketing is so completely internalized by customers and media alike says it all, doesn't it? The most obvious answer to the question in the headline: the data might be sold. From the reportage it sounds like 23andme has done a fairly good job of keeping cops out of the data except when ordered by the courts (if not others) but policy won't be on the auction block with the data.