Given restricting access to DNA testing

Given what we already know about small but hugely important variations in individual body chemistry, the FDA’s whole mental map needs to be redrawn. "The search for one-dimensional, very simple correlations - one drug, one clinical effect in all patients - is horrendously obsolete," Huber told me in a recent interview. And the FDA's latest action needs to be understood in that context - it's just one more way in which a government which now not only says we must buy insurance but plans whose contours are dictated by bureaucrats who arbitrarily decide what is best for all of us.

There’s no doubt that over time outfits such as 23andMe will flourish. Individualization and personalization have already arrived everywhere in our lives, from the infinite numbers of coffee drinks we can get in the morning to online experiences we tailor without a sense of wonder that ability once inspired to so many other aspects of our lives. Good technology tends to win out over time, despite all the attempts by the old guard to stifle it.

But there’s no question that as part of what Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto, who knows a bit or two about innovation and prognostication himself, has recently called “the death throes of the mega-state,” the FDA and the federal government more generally will do everything it can to hold back the future like Canute with the waves.

My advice for those of you who want to sign up with 23andMe but can’t spit in their test tubes for at least a while? Hock your lougies in the FDA’s general direction instead.