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A cheap spit-test that reveals the secrets of your genome, used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide has been stopped by the FDA.
 
FDA warning letter
On November 22^nd 2013 the FDA sent a warning letter to 23andMe, a privately held personal genetic-testing firm based in Mountain View, California to, "immediately discontinue" providing its saliva collection kit and Personal Genome Service, because it had failed to provide adequate information to support the claims made in the company's marketing.
 
23andMe is so named because of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. Founded in 2006, the Company is a Silicon Valley favourite led by Ann Wojcicki, wife of Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders. It has raised more than US$100 million from backers that include Google, Genentech and Yuri Milner, a billionaire investor in Facebook and Twitter.
 
Taking more control of your health
Nature took four billion years to develop the code that determines our life. The Human Genome Project, that ended a decade ago, initiated a medical revolution. In 2003 sequencing an individual genome cost between US$10 and US$50 million. Since then the costs have plummeted towards US$1,000, allowing science and medicine to identify genes with disease causing mutations.  In 2008 23andMe's US$99 personal genome test kit was named by Time Magazine as the "invention of the year".