23andMe to refund some customers' money


The Mountain View-based 23andMe has decided to offer refunds to customers who recently paid $99 to have the company analyze a portion of their DNA and calculate their risk of developing about 250 medical conditions.

The move comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered 23andMe to stop marketing its consumer-oriented DNA test kit and analysis service, saying the company had failed to prove that they were safe, effective and reliable. The FDA expressed concern that some customers would make potentially life-threatening medical decisions based on 23andMe's controversial look at some of the DNA found in a person's saliva.

Such analysis involves using chips from Illumina of San Diego.

In a news release, 23andMe said it has stopped providing health-related information for people who ordered the kit as of Nov. 22, and that it's offering full refunds to those individuals. It didn't specify how many customers would qualify for a refund.

Consumers typically pay $99 to the company for a small device in which they deposit a sample of their saliva. The sample is then sent to 23andMe for analysis.

Anne Wojcicki, the chief executive of 23andMe, said in a publicly released email: "If you are a customer whose kit was purchased before November 22, 2013, your 23andMe experience will not change. You will be able to access both ancestry and health-related information as you always have."


"We stand behind the data we have generated for customers. Our lab partner adheres to strict quality standards that are part of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 -- known as CLIA. These are the same standards used in the majority of other health and disease-related tests."

There are other businesses providing personalized genomic services, but 23andMe has been a front-runner in the rapidly growing industry. It gained national attention when it began selling its DNA test kit package for $99 -- a price that was widely seen as affordable enough for the public.


