THIS GETS FRONT PAGE TREATMENT IN THE NYTIMES:IT was a funny thing to be doing in a cocktail dress.
Debra Netschert, a financial analyst, was sitting next to her husband, K. C. Dustin, an equities salesman, and spitting into a test tube at a party last week in Chelsea to promote a DNA testing company.
As a soundtrack that included “Whole Lotta Love” blasted, the couple were submitting samples for tests that could reveal disturbing news, like his propensity to develop throat cancer or the chances of her having pregnancy complications.
But Ms. Netschert adopted the party mood, focusing, at first, on the less consequential details about her heredity. “I want to figure out why I have freckles,” she said.
It was taking a few minutes to fill the tube with the required amount of saliva, so Ms. Netschert had a dry-mouthed moment to consider what the couple might do if her husband turned out to be carrying a gene that could doom his offspring.
“Then maybe we’ll adopt instead,” she said. “Really.”
Some people might fear a world where widespread DNA testing would remove the mysteries of their futures or even strip them of privacy. But the testing company 23andMe, which was the host of what it billed as a “spit party” in the middle of New York Fashion Week, filled with celebrities, wants people to think of their genomes as a basis for social networking. As in: You are invited to join the group Slow Caffeine Metabolizers.
Co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of a founder of Google, the company, which has token financial backing from Harvey Weinstein and Wendi Murdoch, hopes to make spitting into a test tube as stylish as ordering a ginger martini.
“It’s fun to learn about your own genome,” the 23andMe Web site says.
Typically, customers register and pay online — the price of a test was cut by nearly two-thirds to $399 last week — and are sent a testing kit. A customer spits into a tube, mails it in, and about a month later receives results via a Web account. The information on 89 genetic markers include details of customers’ ancestry as well as what current research suggests are proclivities to certain diseases and other genetic traits like one’s appetite for sugar and responsiveness to antidepressants.
- THIS IS SOMETHING NO ONE IN MIDDLE AMERICA WOULD DREAM OF DOING FOR 400 BUCKS - AT A PARTY NO LESS. OR FOR $1200 BUCKS AT HOME!
- THIS COULD ONLY BE CELEBRATED AMONG THE CHIC GLITTERATI IN NY AND LA - OR AMONG OBAMA SUPPORTERS.
- A BIZ BACKED BY WEINSTEIN AND THE GOOGLE GAL-PAL... IT FIGURES!
- THAT IT RECEIVES SO MUCH PROMINENCE IN THE NYTIMES IS FURTHER EVIDENCE OF THEIR EFFETENESS AND "OUT-OF-TOUCHNESS".
- PEOPLE WHO ARE INTO THIS KIND OF CRAP HAVE A PROCLIVITY FOR OTHER NONSENSE, TOO - LIKE THE IDEA THAT WE LOST IRAQ WAR, LIKE PRE-CONDITIONLESS CHATS WITH AHMADINEJAD, LIKE THE SURGE WAS DOOMED TO FAIL, LIKE CLASS-WARFARE, LIKE GUN-CONTROL, AND LIKE CARBON TAXES AS A WAY TO STOP MYTHICAL AGW.
AND THEY THINK WE ARE MORONS!?!?!
Damn! What a bunch of idiots, with not enough to do, obviously.
ReplyDelete