Gene-test services mislead public, US report says

Bloomberg/San Francisco Chronicle, July 23, 2010

Four gene-testing companies are misleading U.S. consumers by providing unclear or conflicting information on the risk of disease, according to a government investigator who sampled the services on the Internet. Gregory Kutz led a probe for the Government Accountability Office by setting up customer accounts with Navigenics of Foster City, California, 23andMe Inc. of Mountain View, California, Pathway Genomics Corp. of San Diego and DeCode Genetics Inc. of Reykjavik, Iceland, and sending them DNA from five people. The companies' reports assessing health risks were "medically unproven and so ambiguous as to be meaningless," Kutz said in his report, presented today at a hearing in Washington.