I’m interested to pick the Doper’s brains about a company I’ve become aware of: Genewize (www.genewize.com). Apparently they take cheek swabs of their clients and examine the DNA to determine what supplement cocktail would best help you.
There are definitely some scam warning signs, such as the “z” in Genewize, and the fact that they use “Direct Selling” (multi-level marketing?)
Would a cheek swab actually be an effective indicator to what supplements an individual would most benefit from?
According to the website they have a science advisory board consisting of several doctors - how much credibility does that actually lend a company.
Does this company look legit?
I realize this is half GQ and half IMHO, but I’d like to place stress on factual information.
Note: this is not spam, I won’t be subtly defending this company to try to push the product. If opinions are skewed one way or the other I may play devil’s advocate a little bit, but I can assure you I have no person affiliation with this company. I do know someone who’s an affiliate, which is what piqued my curiosity.
Do you really believe that they can tell everything about you from your DNA? Can they tell what your diet is like? Can they tell how much you exercise? Can they tell whether you smoke or take drugs or medications? None of these factors show up in your DNA.
Some scam warning signs? They want you to pay money to do something completely impossible and you detect some scam warning signs?
If I had the money, I’d get together with three or four of my friends and all of us sign up using sample swabs from a single source.
While in theory they could actually be running a spohisticated enough test to detect this, I wouldn’t bet much on it.
I’d probably even have my great dane contribute the sample. Hell, he could provide samples for everyone on the Dope… 
The closest they get is that there is some research being done in the realm of “Personalized Medicine”, wherein the Medical Prescriptions Of The Future will be tailored to you based on your genomic profile. Article here. Granted, it’s a press release, but it gives a basic overview.
Thing is, the study is in its infancy, and nobody’s even close. Certainly a fly-by-night operation advertising on the Internet using a cheek swab from your neighbor’s Labrador Retriever isn’t going to be able to do it yet.
And don’t swab your cheek after recently eating a hamburger, or they may be looking at bovine DNA.
Yep. Right now, the state of the art is promising far less, for far more money. One of the bigger news items on this front is that one or two hospitals are starting to genotype all new cancer patients as part of standard treatment. However, for the next few years at least, nobody expects this to lead to better outcomes. For now, this may guide doctors a bit more as they try to guess which of the myriad of treatment options might work best for an individual. And the cost is $thousands per patient.
Ten years from now, I’d bet that personalized medicine will be making a big impact in things like cancer treatment. Dietary supplement sales? Not so much.