A company called 23andme.com launched recently and got wads of media
attention for being the first user-friendly Web site devoted to home
genomics tests and analysis. For just $1,000, the company will take a swab
of your cheek, sequence your genome and tell you a bunch of things about how
you fit into the family of humanity. It will also allegedly give you nifty
details about yourself, such as whether you have athletic abilities or a
propensity for disease.

And 23andme is just the beginning. Another company called DeCode
offers a similar service called DeCodeMe, and more are sure to follow.
People are desperate to understand themselves, and so they turn to genetics
as if it were a self-help manual instead of a still poorly understood
science.

While there are many theories about how genetic expression works on
our personalities and health, there are few solid facts. Some tests, such as
those for various kinds of developmental disabilities, have provable
results. But many genetic tests, like those 23andme claim can reveal
"athletic ability," are the biotech version of snake oil.

The question I keep asking about home genomics kits is whether they're
any worse than, say, parts of the self-help industry. Both promise to fix
people by making vague pronouncements based on a little science mixed with a
lot of rank speculation.

Both do help people figure themselves out some of the time. And both
are often quite costly -- therapy can go for hundreds of dollars an hour and
so can self-help classes.

I'm wondering, essentially, if there's something exploitative about
the services sold by 23andme. Probably not -- or no more so than the
chocolate sold by Godiva, which is also shockingly expensive and basically
useless. If people want to pony up the cash to have a little fun, why not?

But I don't think it is just a little fun, like chocolate or "find the
inner you" classes are. What I see when I look at a site like 23andme is
nothing less than the future of eugenics. I don't mean the scary capital E
eugenics of the 1930s that involved killing Jews and sterilizing "loose
women." I mean wild-type eugenics, the kind of genetic engineering that
happens in nature without any dictatorial intervention.

It's the sort of eugenics that results when people of the same race
and class tend to marry each other. It's the genetic engineering that
results when men can choose their mates but women can't.

23andme and Web sites of its ilk are just one step away from becoming
social networks based on genetics, like Facebook for people who want to
compare genes instead of beer bongs. Currently that's not what 23andme is
trying to be, though it does offer users the chance to compare their genomes
with those of the general population.

But you can bet that once these companies amass tons of genetic data,
they're going to want to do something with it. After they sell it to
insurance companies -- which will use the information to charge higher rates
to people with "bad" genes -- they'll sell it back to users in the form of
social networks.

Or the users themselves will post their data for all to see, the same
way they already cluelessly post pictures of themselves passed out naked on
MySpace. And out of that data will arise the first dating service based on
genome compatibility. And what is genome compatibility but eugenics?

While newspaper stories about the new personalized genomics services
trumpet the arrival of the future, I see nothing but the past. This isn't
science for the masses; it's not enlightenment. It's just the same old stuff
dressed up in the language of modern biology and tricked out with a zoomy
Javascript interface.

And I do think it's worse than self-help, which is sometimes good for
you. It's worse than Godiva chocolate, which is at least tasty. Home genome
kits, at this point in time, are likely to confuse people at best and
confirm their prejudices at worst.

I'm not saying people shouldn't buy these kits or that they won't be
useful one day, when we understand our genomes better. I'm just saying we
shouldn't use them to understand our places in society. Certainly we
shouldn't use them to find genetically compatible friends. But I'm pretty
sure we will.

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