DNA Testing and Privacy (Behind the scenes at the 23andMe Lab) - Smarter Every Day 176

What's up, I'm Destin, this is Smarter Every Day. You've probably heard of 23andme. It's one of these companies

where you spit in the tube and you mail it off and they do DNA testing and give you ancestry and health data.

Well, here's the deal

They approached me and asked me if I would make a video on Smarter Every Day about them, and what they do

But there's a problem with that

I'm really

fascinated with this technology like I think this is the future of medicine. Imagine a doctor walking into your room opening a chart and saying

"Oh well

I can't give you this drug because you're genetically predisposed to a negative reaction"

That is the future of medicine so I really believe this is important however

I can't do an ad

for something this important and have you the viewer think that I'm just shilling for a company and saying what they want me to say

because they're giving me money, so I set up the following terms. I said, look,

I'll do this video if, number one, I get to ask any question

I want of anybody and I get to say whatever I want as long as it's true

And they said yes to that and number two I want access to the labs with my camera

And I want to be able to ask the scientist questions, and they said yes to that and that never happens !

That's awesome. And number three

I told them I actually wanted them to sponsor the video

Which they did so to their credit, 23andMe is sponsoring a transparent video

which is a little scary for them because they have no idea what I'm gonna say. So here we go,

Let's do this. When you get the kit. It's pretty clear how this exchange works.

I give up genetic material, and I get health and ancestry data back, but that's scary

I don't know what they're gonna do with my sample

I don't know exactly what I'm giving up. When I ask people on Twitter, everybody cited privacy concerns, so just for a second

let's pretend that we can't trust this company we need to go to an independent third-party

expert that knows exactly what type of information we're giving up when we spit in a tube and mail it to 23andMe

So when a lot of people think about, Huntsville, Alabama,

they think about the space industry like the Saturn 5, right ?

But what you didn't know if you get on Google Maps and go to

601 Genome Way, you're gonna see a double helix

you can see from space. That is this place.

No joke. Huntsville,

Alabama is home to one of the largest DNA

sequencing centers in the entire world and it's in my hometown like I see these people at PTA meetings. The HudsonAlpha Institute for

Biotechnology is where Dr. Neil Lamb, a PhD in human genetics works.

We're go in here and learn about DNA sequencing. Hey, are you Neil ? NEIL>> I am

DESTIN>> Hey, I'm Destin. NEIL>> Nice to meet you

DESTIN>> Nice to meet you, yeah NEIL>> Welcome to HudsonAlpha