
23andMe Blunder: Genome scan customers sent the wrong results - ashishbharthi
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/06/personal-genome-customers-sent-1.html
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acangiano
The company should try to prevent this from ever happening again, that's for
sure, but mistakes, even serious ones, happen everywhere. For example,
hospitals mix up babies far too frequently (as mentioned in the article).
Further regulation is not what's needed. In my opinion, 23andme remains an
awesome service and one that shows we're "living in the future", so to speak.

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rokhayakebe
Thank you. I feel like there is a group of internauts who have their hand on
the keyboard just waiting for any company to make a mistake just so they can
start writing hurtful comments.

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bcl
I find it somewhat silly that on finding out her son didn't match her first
though was that he had been switched, rather than that there was an error in
the testing. Which is more likely to happen?

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kalid
I think people may be likely to think that "DNA evidence" is rock solid.

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johnswamps
I wonder if the error was due to the huge increase in orders they must have
gotten after their 80% off sale a month and half ago?

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aheilbut
It sounded like the problem affected one 96-well plate. I doubt that it was
directly related to the increase in volume.

This sort of mix-up can happen very easily - for example, if you load a plate
into a machine backwards. They (or rather, their contract lab) need to have
better processes and internal controls to catch such errors.

