There are many industries based around one time purchases. That doesn't make them immune to booms and busts.

23AndMe saw tremendous growth, both according to the article and my anecdotal experience, but that doesn't mean that the burst they saw was sustainable. It's looking, at least right now, like it's not.

Ah, the lucrative appendix removal industry.

There are 250 000 appendectomies a year in the US, multiplied by 14000 USD => 3.5 billion USD in revenues [1].

[1] https://www.lendingpoint.com/blog/appendectomy-what-it-costs...

Good point. I just have a hard time thinking of a non-elective surgery as an "industry".

Maybe we could make it elective and pump those numbers up to grow the addressable market size to all Americans

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170109162333.h...

No one is earning a living solely doing appendectomies...

Considering the types of cars that surgeons drive, I'd say yes, quite lucrative.

It's surgery that pays well, it doesn't mean it's all from a single procedure.

Surgeons often specialise highly. Particularly for complex surgeries. Experience has a huge impact on outcomes.

Not always, possibly not most, but many.

yeah, but what about the appendectomy only doctors, what car do they drive?

Gifting someone a thing that could be used as a paternity test at a baby shower would be more than a little rude. And presumably if both parents have already done it why would you need to test the baby?

> And presumably if both parents have already done it why would you need to test the baby?

Before all the privacy concerns, I was considering getting my kids tested, even though my wife and I have both done it.

Mainly so that I could see which genes they picked up from each of us and if they got any new mutations.

Also, a situation that might be somewhat niche -- we had IVF, so it is possible there was a mistake in the clinic and the child wasn't made from us. I read too many stories about IVF clinics where the samples were switched by the employees with their own.

Even more mind blowing, through sheer clerical error, the children that came out of my wife could be mine but not hers!

Given that they look like us we're pretty sure the clinic didn't screw up, and at this point I would keep them regardless, but if I could discover an IVF mistake, the settlement would make for one heck of a college fund.

> at this point I would keep them regardless,

Gee, how magnanimous of you...

It would be extraordinarily rude . But it's definitely not what the parent comment meant. :)

Mutation is a thing.

"No, no, I wasn't questioning the paternity, you can use the test to check if your baby is a mutant."

Given the popularity of the X-men i think that might improve sales enough to reverse the trend.

But 23andme will always show some differences, while individual SNPs have high accuracy >99% due to the amount that is being tested you will always have some results that are wrong. Multiple testing problem is an issue here.