The prospect of personalized medicine is under heated debate at the Mayo Clinic and it is of interest across the world. A point of contention is the provision of individual genetic risk assessment to healthy patients, especially information predicting risk of common diseases like diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. While scientific debate continues, personal genetic testing is currently offered to the public by commercial firms using a "direct-to-consumer" (DTC) approach. At present, the number of private companies offering such services is growing (i.e. 23 and me, deCode genetics, etc.). Although many professionals hope that genetic risk information will prove to be valuable in the near future, there is little understanding of how this kind of predictive risk assessment will be interpreted and perceived by patients and their doctors. Due to the great attention given to predictive genetic testing in the popular press, one expects that patients will soon demand this testing as part of standard clinical practice. Yet, there is currently no effective regulatory oversight to guide clinicians and policy makers about how to incorporate results from predictive genetic testing into routine clinical use. In fact, no appropriate clinical trials assessing the impact of this type of testing have been completed. Indeed, a recent commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine recommended that all such testing be conducted in the context of a clinical trial.