Genetics Co Files for Bankruptcy

The genetics testing company 23andMe – once the darling of the med-tech world and worth $6 billion – has filed for bankruptcy. The company became popular for selling home DNA test kits that could tell a person more about their ancestry and medical characteristics.  (I used the service myself years ago and discovered a second cousin I didn’t know about living in the Netherlands.)  It seems the company couldn’t generate enough repeat business to sustain itself; after all, it’s not like your DNA changes much and you would need to buy a second test kit. The bankruptcy filing has sparked scares and generated headlines about what a potential new owner of the company would do with a trove of genetic data. It seems that so many people attempted to delete their genetic data from the site in the past week that portions of the site crashed, which triggered more fears. This digital bank run appears to have eased up somewhat, as 23andMe is now reporting that the issues with data deletion requests have been fixed. If you are a past customer of 23andMe and want to delete your data, these steps may help.