23andme

I should probably preface this by saying that I did not bank Noah’s cord blood.

It’s not that I would want Noah to die of leukemia, or that the fear was not in me after losing Emily. It’s that I pretty much have a big response against the kind of fear-based marketing that says do this now in case there is a cure later. I have no problem with carseats and outlet protectors or health insurance. But I do have a problem with companies basing their profit on fear of being behind the eight ball when/if medical science advances.

If 23andme were to have confined its marketing to the “isn’t it cool you can map your genes! And hey contribute to our research!” type of marketing, I would think it was neat.

But going after pregnant women and mothers is really disturbing to me. Other than when my grandmother was diagnosed with Parkinsons (making me, incidently, one of the people 23andme has tried to market to), I can think of no other time I cared as much about my genes as when I was pregnant. Nor another time when I was so aware of the need for good advice and wisdom, as opposed to just information.

I have watched pretty cynically as 23andme has wined and dined key members of my “posse” of mommy blogs/infertility blogs that I read. When they launched their pregancy community that seemed like a big grab.

But the pre-ecclampsia thing… I don’t know, that tore it for me. I kind of hope that in 5 years I’ve been proven wrong.

But chosing a topic that is going to appeal to like, every pregnant woman with a brain, and dangling Knowledge and Information in front of them when the science is just not there yet… that bothered me.

This isn’t as articulate as I would like it to be ’cause I’m tired out, but I have been feeling this dangle. Basically, I think that whether intended or not, 23andme has used bloggers’ ignorance about the difference between PR and journalism, and their personal stories of infertility and parenting, to market a product that really isn’t going to do much. Congratulations, you may be more at risk than the general population… have a good pregnancy.

How does this help? It basically makes the same people that would worry about it, worry about it more. People who are finding out they can get the gene scan are the ones already aware of the problem. There is not really a known solution.

And the genius and evil thing about it, is that 23andme has never made the claims that bloggers have made or implied on their behalf – that buying the gene scan will directly make your pregnancy safer, or your parenting better. Because that would be wrong.