23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline

Re:23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline by markdown on Thursday January 23, 2020 @05:29PM (#22132980)

Thank goodness for that. They definitely won't break that law. Nope. Corporations don't do that.

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Re:23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline by epistasis on Thursday January 23, 2020 @06:08PM (#22133319)

When it's in their financial interest, they will avoid doing things that cost them money. Lawsuits are one such cost. Which is why companies train interviewers not to ask any information that laws prevent them from using during the hiring process. If you don't know, clearly you didn't use that info for discriminatory hiring practices.

Similarly, there was a very recent article about how GINA might be acting as a privacy law, since companies would prefer just not to know:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/genetic-bia...

But then, there's about zero useful information in genetic information when it comes to hiring. If there were useful information, I'm sure we'd see far more violations.

I'm far more concerned about access to life insurance, which is not covered by GINA.

Also, it's very unlikely that a 23andMe type test will have enough clinical information that would be useful even for life insurance purposes or health insurance purposes. Clinical genetic testing is far more powerful that way.

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Re:23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline by reaperducer on Thursday January 23, 2020 @06:34PM (#22133559)

Which is why companies train interviewers not to ask any information that laws prevent them from using during the hiring process.

And yet it happens all the time. All. The. Time.

If it didn't we wouldn't spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on enforcement agencies and lawsuits.

It doesn't matter how many laws are passed, companies are still run by people. And people do bad things, either knowingly or unknowingly or just because they can.

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Re:23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline by neuronic on Friday January 24, 2020 @03:53AM (#22136525)

That is true as long as the cost of lawsuits is higher than the potential gain from breaking the law.

Companies knowingly break the law all the time, reek in profit and send out an army of lawyers to pay some minuscule fine that doesn't impact their bottom line.

Fines that don't threaten to break a companies business are just ignored and basically written off as operating costs.

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Re:23andMe lays off 100 people as DNA test sales decline by reaperducer on Thursday January 23, 2020 @06:32PM (#22133541)

Thank goodness for that. They definitely won't break that law. Nope. Corporations don't do that.

"We're sorry. We can do better. How about we help write a law that regulates us?"

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