> Yeah, but you have to think of the precedent: if 23andme doesn't have to provide proof that their results are accurate, there's nothing stopping me from start

> Yeah, but you have to think of the precedent: if 23andme doesn't have to provide proof that their results are accurate, there's nothing stopping me from starting a company that reads the lines on your palm and tells you if you will develop cancer Hate to break it to you, but this is already the case, and it had nothing to do with the "precedent" of 23andme. Go walk into a church of scientology or go read "The Secret" and tell me that's not what they're offering. Sure, they don't use the word "medical", but it doesn't matter. You are suffering from an educational bias, your worldview is completely divorced from that of the people you are trying to "protect". Most people don't understand that the term medical is no a mere colloquialism, nor do they understand that the lack of that term is a negative implication on the substance at hand. I speak from experience, my aunt died because she went to see quacks instead of a real doctor, despite all the information in the world available to her. Its perfectly legal to tell someone that doctors are full of shit and crystals are the real way to cure something. And you know what? At some point you need to just be OK with that. If not its just white man's burden all over again rebranded as "rich man's burden". > The FDA was started because companies were making medicines that either didn't work or weren't safe and people were relying on them. Hilarious. You want further proof of what I'm talking about? Go to the supplements isle at a grocery store. All that stuff is bullshit and often even specifically says "not approved by the FDA". Guess what? Its still a billion dollar business, and there are people who swear by that stuff and don't trust doctors. No one notices, cares, or understands. Again, your problem is that you are attacking this from a rational position and think that that is how other people operate as well, its not. You are kidding yourself if you think the FDA has succeeded in this goal. > I understand that it's expensive, difficult and time consuming to fulfill this higher burden of proof Ah and now we reach the best part about the FDA: that it effectively makes even educated people worse at making decisions. Despite the fact that the FDA has repeatedly been shown to be corrupt or in bed with certain companies, "approved by the FDA" is still a considered a trusted metric not requiring much further thought. Its not. The FDA has no competition and, like any government agency, incredibly rarely suffers consequences for being corrupt or making mistakes. Most people don't know "the burden of proof" required (and if you read about how bad doctors are at understanding statistics you wouldn't trust that burden of proof anyways).