Do you mean: "Why won't this eventually be available on a drugstore counter so I can diagnose myself?" The FDA's response for decades is this: you don't have a

Do you mean: "Why won't this eventually be available on a drugstore counter so I can diagnose myself?" The FDA's response for decades is this: you don't have a lab to perform a more detailed confirmation (because false positives sometimes do happen), and you have no doctor or counselor to be there with you when you get the results. I worked for a biotech firm that had an instant HIV test available a long long time ago. It was deemed too irresponsible to let people to check themselves at home because the company (and the FDA, and everyone's lawyers) were afraid of people doing rash things after a positive result. If a false-positive HIV patient killed themselves and the family sues, that would be...bad. Even today, the home-HIV test that's on the market involves you sending in the sample and then getting a phone call with the results.