Stumbling Toward the End of an Era
After almost 20 years of publicity stunts and dubious claims, we may not have 23andMe to kick around anymore. The company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The stock has collapsed to about 2% of its peak value. CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki has quit (though she may be baaack) and the company’s future, if any, depends on its DNA database.
Note to customers of the company: Get Out. Cybersecurity expert Adrianus Warmenhoven told the Associated Press:
“What we’re witnessing with 23andMe is a stark wake-up call for data privacy. Genetic data isn’t just a bit of personal information — it is a blueprint of your entire biological profile. When a company goes under, this personal data is an asset to be sold with potentially far-reaching consequences.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has issued an urgent consumer alert that explains the legal status and, more importantly, how to download and delete your data from 23andMe and have your biological sample destroyed. Wired quotes several independent researchers, all of whom stress that there is a real possibility of data exposure that is outside of customers’ control. Bloomberg’s headline:
23andMe’s Bankruptcy Puts 15 Million Users’ DNA Info on Auction Block
The only substantial asset of the company is its DNA database; the value of that is hard to estimate. For comparison, competitor Ancestry sold its database of 18 million users for $4.7 billion back in 2020. Wojcicki has been trying to buy the company back herself. She used to be a billionaire and probably diversified; Forbes estimated that she was still worth $270 million as of June 2023, by which time 23andMe stock had already lost 86% of its market value. The company’s board rejected her offers to take the company private. The first was 40 cents per share last July, which the board rejected on August 2; all seven independent directors resigned on September 17. In February she offered $2.53 per share, and then reduced it to 41 cents; the Special Committee handling the negotiation refused.
Matthew Herper at STAT opened his report with an apposite 99-year-old reference:
How did 23andMe go bankrupt? The same way bankruptcy was described by Ernest Hemingway in 1926: “Two ways: Gradually, and then suddenly.”
The company had three co-founders in 2006: Wojcicki, Linda Avey, who left in 2009, and Paul Cusenza, who left in 2007 (with a significant shareholding) but kept in touch. He told Forbes in 2024:
“I’m glad that she’s persisting with the vision and persevering with it because that was the goal: to accelerate medicine, to help people. It was never about the money. It was all about trying to move society forward and I believe 23andMe has and is doing that.”
The Center for Genetics and Society (CGS) has kept a skeptical eye on 23andMe from its earliest days, initially by following its media mentions, which included, in 2007, both The San Francisco Chronicle (“Now Google is grooming a biotech firm”) and The New York Times (“Company Offers Genome Assessments”). Alternet had the foresight to ask, only a week after the company was formally launched:
Are Home Genome Tests a Step Away from Eugenics?
The first of many Biopolitical Times posts was by Osagie K. Obasogie, in July 2007, and neatly titled “Googling Your Genes?”:
[I]t seems likely that what Google did to the internet … is what 23andme might want to do with genetic information, both mine and yours. (Those who are less than satisfied with Google's privacy practices might find this prospect a bit unsettling.)
95 posts followed, from nine different authors, including:
The Spitterati and Trickle-Down Genomics by Marcy Darnovsky, 2008
Picking the Best Baby, by Jesse Reynolds, 2008
Genotyping Children, by Pete Shanks, 2009
Oversight Agencies Crash the Spit Party, by Jillian Theil, 2010
The Dollars are in the Database, by Emily Stehr, 2012
From Suspects to the Spitterati by Jessica Cussins, 2013
Genetic Surveillance: Consumer Genomics and DNA Forensics, by Elliot Hosman, 2015
Public and policy makers grow suspicious of genetic testing companies, by Adam O'Regan, 2018
Reckoning (or Not) with Racism and Eugenics in Genetics, by Katie Hasson, 2020
The most recent was a year ago, and stands up well: