How Google's Calico Can Win Us Over, One Genome at a Time

Google wants to extend human life through science, but what should we get out of it?

Do you want to live as long as a Vulcan, sea turtle, or Time Lord? If Google has its way, maybe you will in the not-too-distant future.

Last week, Google CEO Larry Page announced the launch of Calico, an effort to tackle humankind's most pesky ailments: aging and death. On the surface, it sounds like the plot of countless science-fiction and James Bond movies, in which immortality and world domination are mutually exclusive. On a more practical level, Calico is one of Google's more realistic "moonshots" because it's going to be driven by what Google is really good at: collecting and disseminating gobs and gobs of data. It's already been able to predict flu outbreaks based on our searches, so it stands to reason that Calico will eventually figure out this whole aging thing and be able to slow it down to the point where some of us might actually live long enough to ride on the Hyperloop.

Calico's announcement did not reveal much about the company's day-to-day operations but it seems the venture will initially focus solely on research and non-profits. However, you have to assume at some point Calico will spawn a consumer-facing product or service. But while the Calico news, anchored by a TIME cover story, is currently a hot topic in the tech space, projects like this often quickly transform into bubble fodder and ultimately become victim to our ever-shrinking news cycle.

For once, I'd like that to change. And given Calico's lofty goals aimed at benefitting the human race, I think Google needs to think about pivoting from its pledge to be a research-only venture to start and instead offer a service to the public that has the potential to benefit both Calico's data machine and the individual. How? In a word: DNA.

The cost of getting a human genome mapped has dropped drastically in the past few years. For a few thousand dollars, you can now unlock your body's genetic code and perhaps get insights into whether you might be susceptible to certain diseases like cancer. Is a few thousand dollars out of your budget? Unfortunately, you'd be hard-pressed to find an insurance company that would pay for it, but soon that may not be necessary. Earlier this year, a CNNMoney article declared the race to the $100 genome is underway as a handful of genetic science startups are offering inexpensive genome mapping services.

As the article points out however, we're still a few years away from that magical $100 price tag to unlock your body's deepest, darkest secrets. So to expedite the process, what if Google and Calico forge partnerships with companies already offering genome mapping? They could subsidize the costs to the point where anyone could get his or her genome mapped cheaply, or even for free. Google, Calico, and the partnering companies get the data they need to advance their research, and we get the gift that keeps on giving as scientific research advances over the course of our lives: a copy of our living code.

Might this be something Google is already thinking about? Are you eager to have your DNA mapped, either for your own edification or for the benefit of humanity? And perhaps most importantly, do you want Google to be the one handling your genetic business?

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How Google's Calico Can Win Us Over, One Genome at a Time