DNA-based disease predictors both thrilling and intimidating

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

At a conference last week I heard the co-founder of 23andMe speak about using her company’s technology to look at our DNA to predict the risk of getting a number of diseases. Anne Wojcicki described how her husband’s DNA showed he had a gene that makes him a likely candidate for Parkinsons disease. She didn’t mention her husband by name, but he happens to be Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google.

The 23andMe kit gives consumers the chance to deposit their saliva into a vial, send it to the company, and receive a comprehensive report that can predict the likelihood of getting 12 different diseases, of having adverse responses to nine drugs, and test whether they happen to be a carrier for 21 different diseases.

I find the description of what 23andMe can do both thrilling and intimidating. Thrilling because you can look into your future. Intimidating because do you really want to?

Interestingly, a New York Times article about these gene decoding services suggests that consumers are slow to pick them up. Some of the companies – the Times listed four that are in the biz – have laid off staff and are not seeing their customer base grow in substantially. DeCodeMe, for example, has 10,000 customers and Navigenics has about 20,000, 5,000 of whom were given discounts to be in a study.

This is understandable. What if you find out you show signs you’re likely to end up with a certain disease, and your insurance company claims this was a “preexisting condition” and denies you coverage in the future? I spoke with Anne Wojcicki about that and other privacy concerns. 23andMe consulted the electronic privacy group, Electronic Frontier Foundation to review privacy issues when designing the technology, she said.

The technology is evolving, and the product makers are evolving with it. And the companies have been doing some useful work, like comparing those who suffered miserably with swine flu to those who did not, with the possibility of discovering some useful information that a drug company can use to design its vaccines. Still, using the study of genomes to gauge health care risks is really a brave new world for most consumers and one that may never catch on. Only time will tell.

Meet John Breyault

by John Breyault, NCL VP, Public Policy Telecommunications and Fraud

Hello to you all, fellow Savvy Consumer Blog readers! I’m the “new guy” here at the National Consumers League. At NCL, I’ll be coordinating the League’s policy activities and managing the National Consumers League’s Fraud Center and the Alliance Against Fraud coalition in my position as Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications, and Fraud.

While I’m new to the position, I have been a fan of NCL for many years through my work as Research Director of the non-profit Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC). In my five years at TRAC, I educated and advocated on behalf of residential and small business consumers of communications services. As such, I became well-versed in all things related to telecom and broadband policy, where I developed an intense love-hate relationship with the minutiae of tariff sheets, ex parte filings, and – yes – even EULA’s.

Concurrent with my role at TRAC, I was also Director, Research at Amplify Public Affairs where I helped launch one of the public affairs industry’s first blogger relations practices (which should serve me well with this blog!). I also designed and implemented issue campaigns using online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook and even virtual worlds like Second Life.

I’m very excited to be joining the League at this important moment in its history. With a new Administration set to take office, the next few months will be a critical time to help shape the future of consumer-friendly policies in Washington. The old saying “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” holds true in policy work as well. Relationships with the new occupants of the White House will be forged. New Members of Congress and agency officials will need to be educated to make sure that the 111th Congress keeps the interests of consumers in mind. In short, the next few months are full of possibilities for the League and I’m proud to have this opportunity be a part of it.

Going forward, I’m looking forward to keeping up a regular posting schedule to keep everyone up to date on the League’s policy activities here in Washington. I’ll also be discussing some of the important consumer news that never seems to make it into the newspapers and evening news. Please do feel free to post comments or drop me a line directly at johnb@nclnet.org.

Protect Your Identity from Pretexting

This month, NCL’s featuring tips in its 2008 Consumer Calendar: Have We Got Tips for You! on protecting your phone records from “pretexting,” an ID Theft technique used by criminals pretending to be you in order to gain access to your personal information.

But NCL’s Fraud Center and the Federal Trade Commission aren’t the only ones out there trying to educate consumers about avoiding ID Theft. Many consumer, finance, and technology reporters have been doing their part to spread the word as well. Here’s a recent story in the Clovis News Journal out of New Mexico, where police are advising locals against scams meant to steal consumers’ identities.

How’d You Do?

Yesterday, we shared four sample LifeSmarts question to test your ‘smarts. How’d you do?

• Foods that bear the radura logo have been: c. Treated by irradiation
• You are a 16-year-old employee. Which of the following are you not allowed to do under the federal child labor laws: c. Be a delivery driver
• Which of the following calls would be prohibited when you register for the National Do Not Call list? c. Telemarketing calls
• What kind of personal information is not covered by any federal privacy law? c. What you watch on cable television
• Which of the following is not an advantage of using compact fluorescent light bulbs instead of incandescent light bulbs? c. They cost less

Are You LifeSmart?

The excitement is building at NCL as we finish the last-minute preparations for the 2008 National LifeSmarts Championship. This year we’re heading to Minneapolis, MN where teens from 29 states will compete. These state champs are sharp, emerging from more than 20,000 other students who answered more than 2.6 million questions in order to make it to Nationals.

Do you think you’re up to the challenge? Test your LifeSmarts skills.

What kind of personal information is not covered by any federal privacy law? (Answer will appear in a blog later this week.)

a. Titles of videos you rent
b. Items you buy at a supermarket
c. What you watch on cable television

Targeting and Tracking Customers Raises Privacy Concerns

By Susan Grant, Director of NCL’s Fraud Center

Most consumers don’t know that their activities online may be tracked by companies that create profiles of them based on the Web sites they visit, the pages they look at, the ads they click on, what they buy, and other information about their behavior. These profiles help businesses target their ads to those consumers who are most likely to be interested in their products or services.

So, for instance, if you’re an avid golfer and you’ve visited Web sites about golf or bought golf equipment online, you may see an ad for golfing vacations to Scotland the next time you visit a travel Web site. This isn’t necessarily sinister — you may want to see ads that are tailored to your interests. But the practice, behavioral tracking and targeting, raises concerns about privacy, security of personal information, the potential for discrimination, and use for other purposes such as law enforcement. Even though these profiles may not include consumers’ names, they may contain information that can easily be linked to specific people.

On November 1 and 2, 2007, the Federal Trade Commission held a Town Hall that brought members of the online advertising industry together with researchers, consumer representatives, privacy advocates, and others to discuss these concerns. Today, the National Consumers League submitted comments asking the FTC to take action to protect consumers and ensure trust in the online marketplace. One interesting idea, which NCL supports, is to create a national “Do Not Track List” similar to the popular “Do Not Call Registry” for consumers who don’t want to be tracked online.

Do Not Call Me. Seriously.

by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Five years ago, I had the pleasure of putting my home phone number on the first national Do Not Call list. Dramatically seeing the number of unwanted telemarketing calls drop was a joy for my family. Back when the list was created in 2002, the plan was that consumers who added their phone numbers to the list would remain on it for five years. When the five years were up, they’d have to sign up again. (Unless, of course, they missed being interrupted at dinner time and wanted the calls to resume.)

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission, the agency responsible for the implementation of the list, announced it would not be purging the numbers after five years and require that people re-up. The U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection of the Energy and Commerce Committee heard testimony from the FTC last week pledging to keep the list going without dropping any names. Great news for consumers! Further steps taken by Congress recently indicate our phone numbers will remain protected. House and Senate committees passed bills making it permanent. We see this as a win-win, and I was on National Public Radio’s Marketplace earlier this week to talk about it.