Biotech firm 23andMe was as soon as hailed as one of the profitable companies promoting DNA evaluation companies to anyone who might afford considered one of its saliva check kits.
However 18 years after it was based, the corporate is getting ready to chapter. So far, 23andMe has but to show a revenue, regardless of 14 million people taking its at-home assessments.
The corporate’s valuation was a lofty $6 billion shortly after going public in 2021. Since then, its valuation has plummeted a staggering 99 percent.
The enterprise was additionally hit with a massive data breach last year, affecting 6.9 million buyer accounts.
Then final month, the corporate’s entire board resigned on the identical day, publicly rebuking CEO Anne Wojcicki.
Now that 23andMe is teetering on the sting, it is elevating evident questions. Maybe in the beginning: if it have been to go underneath, what would occur to all of that extraordinarily private DNA knowledge?
In a piece for The Conversation, College of Melbourne senior regulation lecturer Megan Prictor explored the presumably disastrous implications of 23andMe going bust.
For one, 23andMe is surprisingly open about its willingness to share personal buyer DNA knowledge with service suppliers.
“If we’re concerned in a chapter, merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of property, your Private Data could also be accessed, bought or transferred as a part of that transaction,” the corporate notes in its privacy statement, “and this Privateness Assertion will apply to your Private Data as transferred to the brand new entity.”
In different phrases, your DNA data might simply be handed on to a completely separate firm, a terrifying prospect for a lot of attempting to safeguard their privateness on-line.
As College of Iowa regulation professor Anya Prince defined in a recent interview with NPR, federal protections just like the Well being Insurance coverage Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) don’t apply.
“HIPAA doesn’t defend knowledge that’s held by direct-to-consumer corporations like 23andMe,” she mentioned.
In a press release to The Dialog, a spokesperson reassured that Wojcicki is “not open to contemplating third-party takeover proposals.” If the corporate have been to alter arms, the privateness settlement would “stay in place until and till prospects are introduced with, and conform to, new phrases and statements.”
Worse but, for 23andMe’s present prospects, merely deleting the info could not even be on the desk. The corporate reserves the appropriate to “retain Private Data for so long as obligatory,” per its privateness assertion. Account deletions are additionally “topic to retention necessities and sure exceptions.”
