23andme should not be used as a replacement for a doctor. It would have been a shock to see the results, yes, but the next step is confirmation from a doctor.
That's for a false positive, sure. But who goes to the doctor to confirm a false negative, that 23andme says there's no reason to worry about? The list of negative results is going to be huge, in most cases.
The simple answer is that 23andMe is for informational purposes only. I don't go any more or less to the doctors now that I've results from 23andMe. It is cool information, yes, but that's it.
For most people, not having any symptoms is the (possibly false) negative that prevents them from scheduling a doctor visit. Seeing a catalog of 10000 potential risk factors that I don't have and didn't even know about isn't likely to change that. If I have flu-like symptoms, knowing that I don't have any additional risk factors for lupus won't keep me from seeking treatment for my flu-like symptoms, because I could just have the flu.
The service in no way tells people they have "no reason to worry" about their health. Even if your report came back "clean", that would only be telling you that your genetics don't suggest any particular risk factors spelled out in your DNA, not that you're healthy.
We know not one iota of what there is to know about the genome. Any report they create contains trillions of false negatives; that is the nature of genome research in its current state.
No, the (necessary) risk you take is that you find out true information that you didn't want to know. The risk that you shouldn't have to take is that the testing company sends you BS results.
Probably nothing. Even if you could tell someone the exact instant in time they would die, it's bad news, so they'd deny it up until that time. People with chronic disease know they're going to die because the disease makes their body work incorrectly, which is easy to notice and be depressed about.
Huh? A lot of the negatives they inform you about aren't really actionable (they are in your genome, after all), but if they were, 23 and me isn't a doctor; you would still go see a real one to receive any treatment.