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CNN Live Today
Daily Dose
Aired December 18, 2002 - 11:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: A company is touting what it calls the future of skin care, wrinkle cream based on your DNA. In our Daily Dose this hour, we're talking with two scientists who disagree over whether this really works. We have Charles Ryan, who is chief scientifical officer for Lab 21, the company behind the product. He's at Parisian Department Store here in Atlanta. And Richard Myers is a professor of Human Genetics at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Gentlemen, good morning, and thanks for joining us.
Charles, I want to go ahead and start with you. How does this stuff work? And I want to get past the part of you swab and you get to my DNA. What is the stuff that you put in that makes my cream different from the next lady's cream?
CHARLES RYAN, LAB 21: Sure. What we do at Lab 21 is we do a comprehensive analysis of your skin, and there's two ways that we do that. The first thing, is we ask you 21 questions about your skin, everything from ethnicity, pore size, climate, hydration.
With that information, we put that into a computer and then we also take a sample of your DNA. It's very simple. We simply swab the inner cheek of your mouth, and that information is sent to a laboratory for analysis, and the results come back to our laboratory in New York, where we take all of the information gathered, the information from the profiler, together with the information from the DNA sample to custom formulate a skin care totally suited to your individual skin care needs.
KAGAN: Charles with all due respect, we covered that last hour. This hour, I want to know, how do you formulate, what are you putting in that makes it different?
RYAN: Well, what we're putting in depends on each individual. So there is no one formula. Every formula is unique. So if you have issues relative to sensitivity, if you have issues relative to hydration, if you have issues is relative to wrinkles, it really depends on your individual skin as to what we put in.
And so unlike massed products that try to put in a single active ingredient and then try to sell it to everyone, we don't do that at Lab 21.
KAGAN: All right, Richard, genetics is your business. What do you think about this idea? RICHARD MEYERS, BOSTON UNIV.: Well, I'm basing my views on the information that's contained on their Web site, and based on the information on the Web site, we don't have the technical capability to characterize the genetic makeup of individuals that's going to dictate what skin formula works for that individual.
KAGAN: Let me bring up a different analogy here, Charles, in that with other genetic tests, you can tell perhaps if you have the gene that makes you have a propensity for breast cancer, but it doesn't mean you can cure it. So the same kind of this, you might look at my genes and say, oh, you're going to get these kinds of wrinkles, but it doesn't mean you can come up with a cream that's going to cure those kinds of wrinkles.
RYAN: Well, but what you can do, is you can determine, for example, what is your propensity for premature aging, or your propensity for photo aging, and with that information then, you can formulate a product totally suited for you, and because the Lab 21 product is 100 percent guaranteed, there's really no risk involved. This really is the future of skin care, and we're really excited about it, and the results are our customers are seeing has been tremendous. So we're really excited about this, and we believe we have the cutting edge technology to do that.
KAGAN: Richard I see you smiling and shaking your head.
MEYERS: I wish we knew the genes that were giving us a propensity for aging, because those would be very powerful for not just skin care. but a number of other disease related circumstances. Unfortunately, we don't know the genes that dictate aging processes, and we simply don't have the capability in hand today to deliver this product.
And as Dr. Ryan stated, this may be the future of skin care; it is not the present of skin care.
KAGAN: Charles, it sounds to me like you think your company knows something that somebody at the medical school at Boston University does not.
RYAN: That's right. And actually, we have just filed the first of a series of patents on this, the technology has not been published, and so I wouldn't expect that my colleague at Boston University or anywhere else in the country would necessarily know very much about this. We've only been on the market for about four weeks with the technology, but in a very short time, he, together with lots of other people, are going to better understand specifically what we're doing. But I can tell you, it's exciting.
KAGAN: Here's another concern I would have, privacy issues. I give you a swab of my cheek, who knows where that's going and who's using my DNA information.
RYAN: That's right, privacy is critical in this day and age. And so at Lab 21, we take all of the precautions necessary to secure absolute privacy. The sample is sent to a laboratory under a bar code, so there is no information about that sample other than what the analysis is to be performed, and that information is sent back to our laboratory, and the computer actually matches the bar-coded information with the customer's profile. Remember, we have the 21 questions. That all is merged together, and there's a complex algorithm then that determines what is the ideal skin care for that individual.
KAGAN: I will tell you this, as we ask for an e-mail from our viewers, there is a lot of interest in it, and I'll let you wrap it up. Richard, we did mention that it costs $250 for that small jar. One woman, Katherine Nickels (ph) from Vermont, she wrote, and she said, hey, $250, that seems like a small price to pay that for years. Many have spent thousands of dollars on in the form of facelifts and then you have surgical risks with that. Hey, if you can solve those wrinkle problems without going under the knife, why not? Richard?
MEYERS: Well, thank you. The problem is that you can spend $200 on a product that isn't going to make a difference in your overall skin appearance.
Much of what goes on with the appearance of your skin is your exposure to the sun, smoking and a number of health habits that interact with genes, and we simple don't have the capability to do this for this price, or any price, at this point in time.
KAGAN: Well, we appreciate the two of your points, Charles Ryan, Richard Myers, thank you very much for your time.
We wish you a very young and youthful looking day the rest of the day. Thanks for joining us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 18, 2002 - 11:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: A company is touting what it calls the future of skin care, wrinkle cream based on your DNA. In our Daily Dose this hour, we're talking with two scientists who disagree over whether this really works. We have Charles Ryan, who is chief scientifical officer for Lab 21, the company behind the product. He's at Parisian Department Store here in Atlanta. And Richard Myers is a professor of Human Genetics at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Gentlemen, good morning, and thanks for joining us.
Charles, I want to go ahead and start with you. How does this stuff work? And I want to get past the part of you swab and you get to my DNA. What is the stuff that you put in that makes my cream different from the next lady's cream?
CHARLES RYAN, LAB 21: Sure. What we do at Lab 21 is we do a comprehensive analysis of your skin, and there's two ways that we do that. The first thing, is we ask you 21 questions about your skin, everything from ethnicity, pore size, climate, hydration.
With that information, we put that into a computer and then we also take a sample of your DNA. It's very simple. We simply swab the inner cheek of your mouth, and that information is sent to a laboratory for analysis, and the results come back to our laboratory in New York, where we take all of the information gathered, the information from the profiler, together with the information from the DNA sample to custom formulate a skin care totally suited to your individual skin care needs.
KAGAN: Charles with all due respect, we covered that last hour. This hour, I want to know, how do you formulate, what are you putting in that makes it different?
RYAN: Well, what we're putting in depends on each individual. So there is no one formula. Every formula is unique. So if you have issues relative to sensitivity, if you have issues relative to hydration, if you have issues is relative to wrinkles, it really depends on your individual skin as to what we put in.
And so unlike massed products that try to put in a single active ingredient and then try to sell it to everyone, we don't do that at Lab 21.
KAGAN: All right, Richard, genetics is your business. What do you think about this idea? RICHARD MEYERS, BOSTON UNIV.: Well, I'm basing my views on the information that's contained on their Web site, and based on the information on the Web site, we don't have the technical capability to characterize the genetic makeup of individuals that's going to dictate what skin formula works for that individual.
KAGAN: Let me bring up a different analogy here, Charles, in that with other genetic tests, you can tell perhaps if you have the gene that makes you have a propensity for breast cancer, but it doesn't mean you can cure it. So the same kind of this, you might look at my genes and say, oh, you're going to get these kinds of wrinkles, but it doesn't mean you can come up with a cream that's going to cure those kinds of wrinkles.
RYAN: Well, but what you can do, is you can determine, for example, what is your propensity for premature aging, or your propensity for photo aging, and with that information then, you can formulate a product totally suited for you, and because the Lab 21 product is 100 percent guaranteed, there's really no risk involved. This really is the future of skin care, and we're really excited about it, and the results are our customers are seeing has been tremendous. So we're really excited about this, and we believe we have the cutting edge technology to do that.
KAGAN: Richard I see you smiling and shaking your head.
MEYERS: I wish we knew the genes that were giving us a propensity for aging, because those would be very powerful for not just skin care. but a number of other disease related circumstances. Unfortunately, we don't know the genes that dictate aging processes, and we simply don't have the capability in hand today to deliver this product.
And as Dr. Ryan stated, this may be the future of skin care; it is not the present of skin care.
KAGAN: Charles, it sounds to me like you think your company knows something that somebody at the medical school at Boston University does not.
RYAN: That's right. And actually, we have just filed the first of a series of patents on this, the technology has not been published, and so I wouldn't expect that my colleague at Boston University or anywhere else in the country would necessarily know very much about this. We've only been on the market for about four weeks with the technology, but in a very short time, he, together with lots of other people, are going to better understand specifically what we're doing. But I can tell you, it's exciting.
KAGAN: Here's another concern I would have, privacy issues. I give you a swab of my cheek, who knows where that's going and who's using my DNA information.
RYAN: That's right, privacy is critical in this day and age. And so at Lab 21, we take all of the precautions necessary to secure absolute privacy. The sample is sent to a laboratory under a bar code, so there is no information about that sample other than what the analysis is to be performed, and that information is sent back to our laboratory, and the computer actually matches the bar-coded information with the customer's profile. Remember, we have the 21 questions. That all is merged together, and there's a complex algorithm then that determines what is the ideal skin care for that individual.
KAGAN: I will tell you this, as we ask for an e-mail from our viewers, there is a lot of interest in it, and I'll let you wrap it up. Richard, we did mention that it costs $250 for that small jar. One woman, Katherine Nickels (ph) from Vermont, she wrote, and she said, hey, $250, that seems like a small price to pay that for years. Many have spent thousands of dollars on in the form of facelifts and then you have surgical risks with that. Hey, if you can solve those wrinkle problems without going under the knife, why not? Richard?
MEYERS: Well, thank you. The problem is that you can spend $200 on a product that isn't going to make a difference in your overall skin appearance.
Much of what goes on with the appearance of your skin is your exposure to the sun, smoking and a number of health habits that interact with genes, and we simple don't have the capability to do this for this price, or any price, at this point in time.
KAGAN: Well, we appreciate the two of your points, Charles Ryan, Richard Myers, thank you very much for your time.
We wish you a very young and youthful looking day the rest of the day. Thanks for joining us.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
