From what I have seen of them, they don’t strike me as a stupid or irresponsible company, or lacking in vision for what they could achieve.

I don’t get the short term profit motive either – all they are doing is shipping off a sampler and getting some spit back. It doesn’t make a blind bit of difference where they ship to, as long as they get paid. Maybe that’s the concern.

Hmmm, I wonder if they need a local agent…

This is my observation of them after my long correspondence with them to learn the reasons behind their exclusion of most countries and most world regions from their services. They have no reason for that exclusion other than short-term profit.

Why not directly measure serum levels? This would catch unknown genetic variation in metabolism rates, interaction with other drugs, etc.

I have been trying to find a way to ask them directly but so far can’t find a convenient way. Plus if I get a ‘corporate’ reply I might miss the nuances due to cultural factors. I’m not looking to make a federal case out of it, I just want to know.

It seems kind of odd, for example, that they ship to Azerbaijan, but not say Thailand or Malaysia.

And nowhere in Africa either that I can see.

It’s likely to mean they are creating a huge genomic database with big gaping holes in it.

In response to this article, I disagree about there being a lack of correlation between genetic variants and phenotypes – I would say we have over 3 decades of clear cause of mutations associated with monogenic diseases and over 15 years of associations studies for polygenic and multifactorial diseases.

Check this out – Existence Genetics is now providing a Rare Disease Screen of over 1,000 rare monogenic phenotypes at a single time for $299, all based upon very established studies. And this is in-addition to the multifactorial disease assessments they offer. http://www.existencegenetics.com/rarediseasescreen.php

For me, the value in genetic testing has always been disease prevention, not recreation, although I do understand that for some people the recreational part is fun. But the true value I see in personal genomics is in disease prevention.

There’s a theory that Parkinson’s is due to chronic exposure to low-level toxins like house fungus.