23andMe saved my friend Lara's life. They discovered her BRCA mutation, which led to her getting an MRI rather than a normal mammogram (which she was too young for anyway and which missed the tumor). This caught her cancer in time.

Her blog about it: https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-genealogy-sa...

Irony #1: Stupid and paternalistic laws meant she had to mail in her spit kit from another state, rather than Maryland, where she lives.

Irony #2: She got her diagnosis the day the FDA shut down 23andMe's ability to give people their medical test results.

Depends on the definition of "useless" :)

They used to be better until FDA cracked down and prohibited them from providing a detailed analysis of the DNA results where they would do a very decent breakdown of what kind of decease you might be predisposed to based on the results etc.

From what I understand they still do this in Canada though, also there are online services that can take your results and provide some sort of an extended analysis, never dealt with them though.

To help curing the common cold in a specific individual at a specific time, yes.