How 23andMe Is Changing People's Lives

*By: Madison Alworth* Jill Steinberg credits 23andMe with saving her life. The mom of two decided eight years ago to take the ancestry and health tests for fun with her husband, Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg. As a result, she found out she carried the BRCA 1 gene mutation. That means she had a much higher chance of developing breast cancer. In fact, 80% of those with the mutation are eventually diagnosed with the disease. After receiving the news from 23andMe and consulting with her doctors, Steinberg decided to get a double mastectomy. "It was life-changing news to find out," she said in an interview Friday. "But it was something that I could take, consult my doctors, and do something about. So I feel that I was able to save my own life, take my life into my own hands, and survive cancer before I got cancer." Anne Wojcicki, CEO and founder of 23andMe, is happy to provide this kind of information to the public. She says she tells employees, "We really change lives. And it might be about ancestry, and it might be you found out something meaningful, but there's always something there to learn." Investigators recently used genetic information to make an arrest in a decades-old case. A suspect was taken into custody this week in the Golden State Killer case. An [open-source DNA](https://www.wired.com/story/detectives-cracked-the-golden-state-killer-case-using-genetics/) database was used to finally draw a connection between the suspect and the crimes. Instances like that have some people ー even those not trying to conceal crimes ー worried that genetic and other records stored online could eventually get into the wrong hands. But Wojcicki said that keeping 23andMe customers' information private and secure is a top priority. "We do everything we can to protect our customers," explains Wojcicki. "We have no business if I can't protect the privacy of our customers." For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/how-23andme-is-saving-lives).

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