MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 2019 The Boston Globe Business D3
TALKING POINTS
FOOD
VEGAN SEA URCHIN
WILL SOON START
SHOWING UP ON
SUSHI COUNTERS
The meat-free movement is finding its way into strange and exotic dishes. The latest
example: imitation uni. Usually, the orange innards of sea urchins served in sushi res-
taurants are harvested from spiky creatures that live on seabeds. The delicacy requires
much labor to collect and keep fresh. That makes it one of the most expensive items on
menus; a 100-gram box of top-grade uni from Japan can fetch $47. Japan already con-
sumes 80 percent of the world’s uni, and demand will only climb thanks to sushi’s
growing popularity. That’s why Fuji Oil Holdings, maker of processed foods, developed
the world’s first imitation uni, using flavored vegetable oils and soy-based ingredients.
Connoisseurs seek out uni for its fresh-from-the-sea aroma; the best uni is firm until
eaten. Fuji Oil’s version is treated more like an ingredient meant to be used in a variety
of dishes. Even so, one Tokyo sushi restaurant expressed an interest in trying it out.
Restaurants may eventually have little choice but to add plant-based seafood to menus.
Overfishing is a serious concern. — BLOOMBERG NEWSTRANSPORTATION
REED TO
ANNOUNCE
FEDERAL FUNDING
FOR PROVIDENCE
STATION
Democratic US Senator Jack Reed is planning to join Amtrak and Rhode Island trans-
portation officials on Monday to announce federal funds to help modernize Providence
Station. Reed said the money will help overhaulthe station, make interior renovations
to expand its footprint to the west, and reuse existing space, while repairing the roof
and improving connectivity to Providence. The improvements will also anticipate fu-
ture growth. Reed earlier helped secure $5.2 million in federal funds for enhancements
and $3 million for planning, design, and environmental reviews. Providence Station
ranks 11th out of more than 530 Amtrak stations for ridership. State officials said the
modernization will benefit about two million annual intercity and commuter rail rid-
ers. — ASSOCIATED PRESSENERGY
TESLA
RELAUNCHES
SOLAR-PANEL
BUSINESS WITH
NO-CONTRACT
RENTALS
Tesla has another new plan to revive its solar division: rentals. The California company
is offering no-contract solar-panel packages, according to tweets on Sunday by CEO
Elon Musk. “With the new lower Tesla pricing, it’s like having a money printer on your
roof,” Musk said in a tweet to those who live in states with high electricity costs. “Still
better to buy, but the rental option makes the economics obvious.” Tesla recently re-
ported its third consecutive quarterly decline in solar installations. Less than three
years ago it bought SolarCity Corp. for $2.6 billion. The automaker deployed just 29
megawatts in the second quarter — the least yet in a single period. At its height, Solar-
City installed more than 200 megawatts over three months. Tesla has made several
strategic pivots that have eroded its market share. It ceased door-to-door marketing,
ended a partnership with Home Depot, cut jobs, and prioritized direct sales over the
no-money-down lease that SolarCity popularized. This year, it shifted to selling stan-
dardized panel systems online, rather than the bespoke arrays that have driven the
rooftop-solar industry’s US growth. Tesla’smonthly rental includes installation costs,
support, and maintenance. The contract can be canceled at any time, though there
would be a $1,500 charge to remove the system. — BLOOMBERG NEWSlong family history of cancer.
(The clinic at Mass. General
will offer “medically indicated”
testing, too.) By contrast, insur-
ers generally refuse to cover the
elective sequencing offered at
the clinics sprouting up at top
academic medical centers.
There’s not yet strong evidence
to indicate that apparently
healthy people derive wide-
spread benefits.
The result is that the new
clinics generally serve only
those who can afford to pay
cash. That worries some in the
medical community.
“The idea that genomic se-
quencing is only going to be ac-
cessible by wealthy, well-edu-
cated patrons who can pay out
of pocket is anathema to the
goals of the publicly funded
Human Genome Project, and
creates new disparities in our
health care system,” said Dr.
Jonathan Berg, a genetics pro-
fessor at the University of
North Carolina.
As more preventive genom-
ics clinics open their doors,
some report that demand is
surging.
The Mayo Clinic offers elec-
tive sequencing at its flagship
sites in Minnesota, Arizona,
and Florida, as part of a pro-
gram that is aimed at business
executives. The genomics offer-
ing soft-launched in 2014, and
has gradually attracted more
interest each year. But demand
“really started to take off” last
year, after sequencing was add-
ed to a menu of options for ex-
ecutives interested in a medical
workup, said Teresa Kruissel-
brink, a genetics counselor who
manages the team at Mayo that
helps patients interpret these
results. More than 1,300 adults
signed up to get sequenced last
year.
Other clinics, though, have
seen less interest.
Since UCSF opened its pre-
ventive genomics clinic in
2017, a few hundred people
have paid to get genomics pan-
els ranging from about $300 to
$800, or for more thorough ex-
ome sequencing ranging from
about $2,000 to $2,500. Dr.
Aleksandar Rajkovic, UCSF’s
chief genomics officer, who
runs the clinic there, was sur-
prised that demand hasn’t been
higher.
One reason for the modest
demand, he mused, is that
UCSF hasn’t heavily advertised
the service. Another? “Most
regular physicians are not real-
ly recommending it because at
this point in time there really
haven’t been studies that show
significant clinical utility of do-
ing this testing in healthy pop-
ulations,” Rajkovic said.
The priciest high-end se-
quencing offering is a commer-
cial one, from Human Longevi-
ty Inc., the San Diego company
founded by genomics pioneer
Craig Venter. In 2015, HLI
launched an extraordinarily in-
depth medical workup, includ-
ing genetic analysis, for
$25,000. Seeking to bring in
more customers, the company
started offering discounts,
dropping the price to $4,950 as
of last summer. (HLI didn’t re-
spond to STAT’s requests for
comment on current pricing.)
But that business hasn’t grown
as quickly as executives and in-
vestors hoped, The Wall Street
Journal reported in December.
At the new clinic at the
Brigham, which is expected to
primarily draw people from the
Boston area, Green said he’s
not worried about demand.
“We’re not trying to make a
profit — we’re trying to offer a
service in a medically responsi-
ble way. And so if a very modest
number of people want to use
it, that’s fine,” Green said.
“What we’re trying to say is
that people are using this,
whether it’s HLI or consumer-
facing laboratories over the In-
ternet, and we’d like to provide
them with an alternative.”
Green’s new clinic at theuGENETICS
Continued from Page D1Brigham grew out of his work
on several of the most ambi-
tious research studies aiming to
assess whether thorough ge-
nomic sequencing is worth it.
One was BabySeq, a study of
360 newborns that randomly
assigned half of the group to
get genomic sequencing and
the other half to get standard
screening. Another was Med-
Seq, a study of 200 adults that
randomly assigned participants
to either get their genome se-
quenced or their family medi-
cal history analyzed.
The Brigham’s clinic has
seen a couple dozen patients
since a soft launch last winter.
One of them is Nicole, a Bos-
ton-area entrepreneur in her
40s who requested her sur-
name not be disclosed because
she does not want insurers to
know that her genome has
been sequenced.
Nicole said she learned
about the new offering at a
fund-raiser in New York sup-
porting Green’s research.
To decide what to order, Ni-
cole read through a menu offer-
inggenomicsequencingand
gene panel tests, including sev-
eral offered by genomics com-
panies. After weighing her op-
tions, she decided to move for-
ward with a $2,950 offering, to
be run by a laboratory at the
Broad Institute in Cambridge,
that would scour more than
3,700 of her genes for disease
risk. She also added on a $349
test from the company One-
Ome that promised to analyze
her DNA to see how it influenc-
es the effectiveness of certain
medications. (Green is a paid
adviser for several genomics
companies, including Veritas
Genetics, one of the companies
on the Brigham clinic’s menu of
offerings.)
It was expensive, Nicole
said. But she already invests
heavily in diet and exercise,
and saw sequencing as one
more thing she could do for her
health. And she didn’t want to
wait for the price to go down,
she said, because of the risk
that disease could strike in the
interim. “If there’s preventative
actions that I can take now as
compared to later, then I’d
rather know,” Nicole said.
At the Brigham clinic last
week, Nicole got her blood
drawn and her cheek swabbed.
It was part of an extensive visit
that each patient will get before
the sequencing is performed,
involving taking a medical his-
tory and undergoing a full
physical examination meant to
help guide decisions about fol-
low-up testing and other care.
She’s expecting to return to the
clinic in a few months to get
her results.
In most cases so far, insurers
have paid for the initial and fol-
low-up visits to the Brigham’s
clinic. Without insurance, the
initial visit tends to cost around
$1,000, and the follow-up visit
may go for a few hundred dol-
lars.
While the Brigham’s clinic is
offering people a purely clinical
service, it involves an optional
research component, too. Most
of the first patients have agreed
to participate in PeopleSeq, a
study funded by the National
Institutes of Health that aims
to track the long-term out-
comes of people who’ve gotten
thorough genomic sequencing.
(The cost of the sequencing is
not waived if they agree to sign
up.)
The study’s goal is to follow
thousands of patients across
the country for as many years
as they’re willing to complete
an annual online survey that
will ask basic questions, like
whether the person has devel-
oped cancer or a thickened
heart wall, or faced insurance
discrimination. “We have no
data on so much of this,” Green
said. “It’s all been in the realm
of speculation.”Rebecca Robbins can be reached
at
[email protected].Atgeneticsclinics,
it’scostsvs.benefits
they are far less challenging
for driverless vehicles to
navigate, and the routes are
essentially pre-planned, like
those of shuttle buses.
On my ride, the first thing I
noticed was that the driver
was triggering the turn
signals. I got two answers
when I asked about that: that
turn signals hadn’t been
woven into the company’s
system, and that it helped the
driver stay alert if he was
responsible for a task.
The vehicle was set with a
top speed of 15 miles per hour
through most of the Navy
Yard, but on a final stretch of
pier heading to the ferry dock,
that was trimmed to 10 miles
per hour.
Sometimes, I was told, lots
of pedestrians and cyclists
used the pier road — though
none were in evidence on my
trip at about 4 p.m. (I rode just
as any other passenger would
have, without pre-arranging
my visit as a journalist.)
When the vehicle arrived at
the dock, the driver took full
control of the vehicle and
executed a three-point turn to
orient it properly for the
return trip. That, he explained,
was because the vehicle had a
uINNOVATION ECONOMY
Continued from Page D1
big buffer zone — it would stop
if it got too close to people
— and there were often many
people on this part of the pier.
A human driver could see that
no one — save for an Optimus
Ride employee who was
overseeing the fleet — was
within 30 yards, but this
generation of driverless vehicle
doesn’t have the same
situational awareness.
On my return trip, I noted
that the vehicle stopped at an
intersection where there was
no red sign — just the word
STOP painted in white on the
pavement. While that might
have confused some self-
driving vehicles, this one was
programmed for a specific
route, so it paused properly at
the right spot. Its digital
cameras also identified a
pedestrian about to cross the
road, and the vehicle waited
before proceeding. It stopped
to let one car go through an
intersection, but seemed
confident that it had the right
of way when another car was
waiting to make a left turn.
More than 1,000 people
have ridden the vehicles in
Brooklyn since the service
opened to the public on Aug.- It’s paid for by the Brooklyn
Navy Yard Development Corp.,
so it’s free. At 15 miles per
hour, with two people in the
front plus sensors and
software monitoring our
progress, it felt exceptionally
safe. I considered offering a
tip, but wondered how I might
split it between the humans
and the algorithms.
How long will it be before
Optimus is offering truly
driverless trips around such
sites? Karaman hedges a bit
when he says that 2020 is the
goal — at least for “certain
sites, certain routes, at certain
times of day.”
Because driverless vehicles
are still in their infancy, it’s
easy to be skeptical about their
potential to be safer, more
efficient, and less expensive to
operate than cars with drivers.
Yet many new technologies
require a decade or two of
development before they’re
truly better than the things
they’re designed to replace.
So far, says robotics pioneer
Rodney Brooks, predictions
about the imminent arrival of
driverless cars have been “way
off.” Brooks is a cofounder of
the robot maker iRobot and an
MIT professor emeritus.
“There’s a general impression
of things being tested
autonomously” — without
people at the wheel — “and I
have not seen one yet,” he says.I wondered: What would be
Brooks’s criteria for hopping
into a truly driverless vehicle
and driving on a regular road
or highway — versus one in a
contained, low-speed
environment like the Brooklyn
Navy Yard? Would he want to
know about the maker’s safety
record?
“It’s a hypothetical so far in
the future that you can’t say
anything sensible, because you
don’t know what will have
gone down,” he says. “I just
don’t think anyone is going to
deploy them for a long time.”
Karaman, the chief
scientist at Optimus, doesn’t
disagree. That’s why, he says,
his company is starting with
geo-fenced environments; a
second phase could be vehicles
without drivers that are
monitored remotely by a
“team of 10 people that could
operate a fleet of 50 vehicles,”
he says.
But hopping into a car in
Harvard Square, in a blinding
snowstorm, and being taken to
Times Square with no driver
on board? “That’s not going to
happen anytime soon,”
Karaman says.Scott Kirsner can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow
him on Twitter @ScottKirsner.‘Self-driving’vehiclesstillneedhumanhelp
OPTIMUS RIDEAn Optimus Ride autonomous vehicle traveled the streets of Boston’s Seaport.