February 11, 2013
Richard Hill as a child with his adoptive parents, Harold and Thelma Hill. Richard Hill spent his career working in the sciences and in marketing, but hearing about his decades-long search for family you get the sense he would have made a great detective. While shoe leather helped him unravel much of the [...]
February 6, 2013
February is American Heart Month and a time to focus on what remains the nation’s number one killer — heart disease — which is responsible for one in three deaths in the United States every year. Why heart disease is so deadly has a lot to do with lifestyle and diet in America. Obesity, even among [...]
January 29, 2013
Last year 23andMe and Genentech launched an online study of metastatic breast cancer to learn more about what role genes might play in how a person responds to bevacizumab, also known as Avastin®. (Avastin® is not approved by the FDA for treatment of metastatic breast cancer.) We were happy with the [...]
January 24, 2013
You probably know that smoking and excessive drinking are bad for you. But did you know that your genetics also factor into how much those vices can impact your health? Healthy lifestyle choice — like avoiding cigarettes — make you less susceptible to a host to diseases. For instance, non-smokers live, [...]
January 18, 2013
Here’s something to file under “Thank Goodness!” Researchers at the University of Bristol found that people with the genetic variant making them more prone to smelly armpits are also more likely to wear deodorant. The paper, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, looked at variants in [...]
January 11, 2013
A sure way to make you more diligent about washing your hands is to read a little coverage on what’s turning out to be the worst flu season in recent memory. A lucky few of us, however, have defenses that go beyond trusty soap and water — our genes. Approximately 30 percent of people with European [...]
January 9, 2013
Thank you, Virginia. In a recent article in Slate, Virginia Hughes, who also blogs for National Geographic, nails it, hammering home the point that people are much smarter and tougher than they’re depicted in many news articles about genetic testing. We’ve written before about what feels like fear [...]
December 26, 2012
December was a busy month for 23andMe and in the midst of the hubbub we put out Ancestry Composition, an amazing feature that gives finer detail of an individual’s heritage going back generations. Since its release we’ve heard some great feedback saying the feature has set a new standard in the [...]
December 20, 2012
Take a moment to look back at the ten most interesting and significant genetic findings of 2012 or at least the ones that drew our attention. In the last 12 months we’ve seen huge strides in genetic research giving us new insight into serious conditions such as Alzheimer’s as well as new treatments for [...]
December 19, 2012
You’ve got to love the lead sentence of the Daily Globe and Mail story about the launch of a Canadian Genome Project: “Jill Davies is Canuck One.” Ms. Davies is the first of what researchers hope will be 100,000 people to join the Personal Genome Project in Canada. Like its counterpart in the [...]
