Obsessed with Our DNA: The Rise and Fall of 23andMe
Updated
When a trusting customer purchases a kit from 23andMe, spits in their tube, and mails it back, they effortlessly provide 23andMe with genetic data on dozens and dozens of their traits. If the intended goal is to discover a family ancestry line, or if they are a candidate for ailments like breast or prostate cancer and other disease-causing variants, then 23andMe may seem like a valuable tool. However, by consenting to let 23andMe run tests, customers agree to user terms set by the company. During that process, by opting to take part in research studies, customers agree to share their unique genetic data with 23andMe to be used for “scientific research.” The big question is—did the customer understand this meant that their data could be sold and transferred to drug companies to explore novel medicines, research genetic findings around COVID and long COVID, and they could be recruited to participate in clinical trials?
In 2018, 23andMe signed a 5-year agreement to help pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) discover more precise drug targets and recruit clinical trial participants likely to respond to treatments. The deal included GSK taking a $300 million equity stake in 23andMe, which became the pharma giant’s exclusive partner in drug target discovery. By taking numerous surveys, customer input connects genetic factors and variations with medical conditions. The scheme is a brilliant and swift way to collect an ever-expanding supply of behavioral, health, and genetic information on human beings whose freedom and privacy is already under attack. And much of society bought into their scheme—in 2018, 23andMe declared that 80 percent of its 5 million customers agreed to participate in their studies.
The agreement with GSK was not just about sharing data but about leveraging 23andMe’s unique resources, including its early-stage research programs on a wide range of diseases. The agreement stipulated that 23andMe exclusively offers its genetic and medical conditions databases and analytical services to identify more precise targets for GSK’s experimental drugs. According to GSK, this would improve the likelihood of the drugs’ success and reduce adverse effects. GSK’s chief scientist and president of Research and Development, Hal Barron, stated that the partnership would “help to shift our research and development organization to be ‘driven by genetics,’ and increase the impact GSK can have on patients.” Backing up that sentiment, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki stated:
“We all have some disease or health issue that we care about. By working with GSK, we believe 23andMe’s scientists and researchers can more quickly make the kind of breakthroughs that make a difference.”
But do we ALL have some disease or health issue we care about? I’m not so sure. If we listen to Big Pharma, which owns and controls mainstream media (and is putting millions in 23andMe’s pocket) we do. Confident it’s an issue, 23andMe is laser-focused on DNA and adverse health-related problems. The timing couldn’t be better, considering where we are now with the amped-up speed of novel mRNA products.
It is important to note that for three and a half years before its agreement with GSK—for nearly a decade—23andMe was already in bed with Big Pharma. The company has shared prized genetic information from consented customer data with at least six other pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, including GSK. According to a 2018 Wired article, since the company began nearly two decades ago, offering this type of back door access to customer information in the service of science has been 23andMe’s business strategy all along.
As the partnership between 23andMe and GSK came to life, besides publicly disclosed deals with Genentech and Pfizer, 23andMe was also partnered with Janssen, Lundbeck, Biogen, and Alynlam Pharmaceuticals to share genetic studies run on anonymous customer data. These alliances continued unchanged once the GSK partnership began, but 23andMe agreed not to enter into any new partnerships focused on drug target discovery for the next five years.
As 23andMe’s partnership with GSK became news, many customers were angry, surprised, and unaware of what they had signed up for by mailing in their spit despite opting into the company’s research. “If you read the documents carefully, all the information is there,” says Kayte Spector-Bagdady, a lawyer and bioethics researcher at the University of Michigan who reviewed 23andMe’s customer policies. “They really do disclose it all. The challenge is that people don’t read it.” Unfortunately, that is often the case when there is fine print in the fine print, and much of it looks like other fine print people click through every day on the internet to do daily tasks like browse, buy, watch, and listen online.
For example, when a customer registers a DNA kit on 23andMe, they must accept the company’s terms and conditions and privacy policy, which combined disclose what data is collected by 23andMe, how it’s protected, and how it can be used and shared. Following that, customers are given the option to take part in 23andMe research. Wired explained that a lengthy document defines what that entails, and if they click a green box at the bottom saying “I DO GIVE CONSENT,” then the majority of their data—their genetic profile plus any information they enter into surveys or authorize 23andMe to import—can be used for research in de-identified and aggregated form. Lawyer and bioethics researcher Kayte Spector-Bagdady, who has reviewed 23andMe’s customer policies, remarked:
“They’re so used to sharing data that they may not realize it’s just going in the front end and out the backend.”
The exclusive five-year agreement between 23andMe and GSK ended in late 2023. On October 30, 23andMe announced a new $20 million non-exclusive data license agreement with GSK, extending their collaboration and enabling GSK to continue conducting drug target discovery with its massive database. The license will also include access to certain services, such as further analyses of the 23andMe data not provided in the core data release. Well, thanks to COVID, their research and services to customers have expanded, so of course, they are adding data to the core data release—they have more to add because, as the pandemic slogan goes, “we’re all in this together” and those innocently buying into the bully-based COVID propaganda felt compelled to help “science.” What better platform than 23andMe?
Not easily recognizable by design, it is fair to assume that the actual plan behind 23andMe—to collect millions of genetic records and make millions with Big Pharma—is part of the deep state agenda to regulate and parade society toward transhumanism—the merging of humans and AI. Watch out; these people are embedded everywhere. 23andMe founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and is the sister of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who now serves in an advisory role to Google and Google-parent Alphabet. You can’t make this stuff up. Besides owning patents on potential therapies for some of the ailments her tests have uncovered (that is enough, by the way), Anne is obsessed with our DNA. Why?
Whatever the sinister reason, something is not working. 23andMe agreed to go public in 2021 via a merger with billionaire Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. At the time, 23andMe was valued at $3.5 billion. Today, the company is floundering, with its stock losing more than 90% of its value and sales of its DNA kits slowing so much that it is now focusing on its latest product, Total Health. This expensive $1,188 program includes blood tests, regular check-ins with company health-care providers, and DNA testing. No thanks. It all feels too creepy.
In mid-April 2024, less than three years after 23andMe began selling shares and two months after a massive data breach affecting nearly 7 million customers, Wojcicki announced she was considering taking the struggling company private. Perhaps, and this is a hopeful thought, people have wised up and no longer want their DNA manipulated, shared, or tinkered with in any shape, form, or fashion by 23andMe, the dangerous mRNA jabs, and whatever else is lurking around the corner. And yes, that is thanks to the unprecedented and widespread corruption exposed during COVID. We will not stop reporting on it.
