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There must be something wrong with me. After receiving notice from 23andMe [1] that my personal genetic profile was complete, I waited three months to go online and check out the results. I'm clearly out of step with the rest of humanity, which, judging from the explosive growth of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, is desperate to get a glimpse of its genes. More than a dozen testing services have launched since 2006, and industry sales, according to one estimate, could hit $1 billion this year. "Genome-informed," personalized medicine is viewed by doctors and patients as the wave of the future, the path to wellness-or, to quote the slogan of one California testing company, a way to "Live Better-Longer." But will we really? Or is peddling genetic tests as the medical equivalent of an iPod simply a way to reel in enough people to serve a greater business model-in which the test is the proverbial free toaster, and customer data is the real product for sale?
For anywhere from free to thousands of dollars, firms with names like deCODE [2], Navigenics [3]...