One of the things that got me interested in genetics was the relationship between genes and environment. We are all dealt a certain deck of cards, but our environment can influence the outcomes.
If health care is a $2.7 trillion industry, and a huge percentage is paid by the government, then you have to be involved in politics to make a difference.
If we can actually decrease the failure rate from nine out of 10 drugs failing in clinical trials and instead have seven out of 10 instead failing, that is a major victory for drug discovery and for people having better therapy.
If you don't read it, you don't know. I mean, that's why I have a PR team. They read it and tell me if there's something, and that keeps you focused. I know my family and me well enough; why do I need to read about myself? I'm not going to change, I'm very stubborn in this way. I am what I am.
It's crazy to me that in this world of electronic medical records Walmart has so much information about how we shop, but no one has that information about our health. Why can't my doctor say, 'Wow, Anne, based on your lifestyle and behavior, you're five years from being diabetic.' But I can go to Target, and they know exactly what I'm going to buy.
It's interesting: I think, genetically, there are people who need different things, like exercise. I need the exercise, others not so much, and I think more and more, we'll start to understand why people's bodies function in certain ways.
It's one of the things I want people to understand about science... You don't have to be the best person in the world at it. But you can be good, and there are so many different opportunities in science.
It's worth knowing more about the complicated environmental and genetic factors that could explain why traumatic brain injuries lead to long-term disabilities in some people and not in others.
Once a week, I might stay late at work. It's sometimes very efficient to work until 7 P.M. - and then come home to kids who are clean and ready for bed. Those days are good.
One of the big drivers for me is that health care is a very elitist system. As much as we try to make it free and democratic for all, the reality is that it's expensive and not all therapies are accessible to all people. So I have been very focused on making sure that we democratize genetic information so it's available to everyone.
One of the most exciting aspects of 23andMe is that we're enabling you to watch a revolution unfold live during your lifetime, and I think that the decoding of the genome, in my opinion, is the most fascinating discovery of our lifetime, and you get to be part of it.
You should know how to take care of yourself. That's one of the things that I got from my mother most - she always said that if you don't take care of yourself, no one will.
Our approach to medicine is very 19th-century. We are still in the dark ages. We really need to get to the molecular level so that we are no longer groping about in the dark.
Part of the beauty of Silicon Valley is that people generally encourage you to think crazy. It's the hypothesis that there's nothing sacred that can't be changed.
People are used to dealing with risk. You are told if you smoke, you are at higher risk of lung cancer. And I think people are able to also understand, when they are told they are a carrier for a genetic disease, that is not a risk to them personally but something that they could pass on to children.
The fact that my environment influences my life so much - and that my environment is in my control - gives me a great sense of empowerment over my health and my life.
The pharma industry is one of the few industries that comes up every year and brags about how much worse they got - like, now it costs $2 billion to make a drug, and it was a billion 5 years ago.
TIVO was a big shift in how people watched TV, but everyone understood the concept of TV. No one really understands the concept of, well why would I want my genetic information?
Traditionally, when you talk to people who have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, they'll talk about how they're in five or six studies, and they've been sequenced by each study. That's just fat in the system. Just have a single data set that then you can share. You can make the entire system more efficient.
When I graduated from college in 1996 and the Internet was taking off, I remember this feeling that there was an open range where anything could be built.
