Do I have bowel cancer? How much longer will I be fertile? Have I caught an STD? And I am on the brink of the menopause? The answers to all the above, as well as to more than 80 other health concerns, are now as close as your nearest pharmacy. Want to know your cholesterol reading, madam? Wondering whether you've got diabetes, sir, or fear you are harbouring a prostate tumour? Worry no more: for a small outlay, a home test can be yours, with no need to take half a morning off work to sit in the GP's waiting room.
Home health testing: what could be simpler? With, for example, cholesterol tests at around £10 and prostate kits £15, a negative result means you can boot your fear out of the window, while a positive result means you see your doctor at the earliest opportunity. You can't lose. Or can you? Could home tests be the pharmaceutical industry's latest cynical attempt at scaring us out of our cash? After all, these tests, which can cost up to £179, could cause unnecessary concern - as well as false reassurance.
Whichever side of the argument you are on, one thing is clear: home health tests are big (and growing) business. A report by Mintel in December uncovered a 40% jump in sales of self-diagnosis kits since 2000, and estimated the market to be worth £68m. By 2010, the report predicted, it will have grown to £94m. And while 75% of over-65s said they regarded the doctor's surgery as the right place to go for check-ups, less than half (46%) of the 25-34 age group agreed.
It is this generation for whom the culture of self-testing is likely to become commonplace. Collecting a sample of urine or faeces, pricking your finger to splodge a bit of blood out on to a test card (which is what most of the tests require) will become second nature if the industry has its way. Many tests involve a chemical reaction, and an instant "verdict", while some require you to post samples for analysis. Many home tests are backed by a helpline number, so if you have a worrying result, or a problem carrying it out, there is someone to turn to.
But isn't there a reason GPs spend nine years studying? Quite, says Dr Graham Archard, vice chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners. "A little learning can be a dangerous thing. You might have someone who interprets a 'bad' result as the end of everything and doesn't realise that, for example, there are reasons why you might have blood in your stool that have nothing to do with cancer."
Archard maintains that there has to be some qualitative difference between finding out about your health in a DIY kit and getting the benefit of professional wisdom. "A doctor looks at all of you, so if there's a false positive or a false negative, for example, he or she has the experience to say, hang on, that doesn't seem quite right."
There is also the question of exploitation. "The truth is," says Archard, "that if you're in an at-risk group for a certain condition, you've got the right to have a test on the NHS. I think it's inappropriate for people to spend their hard-earned cash on something they are entitled to have free."
Self-testing isn't new - its roots stretch back decades. What, after all, is a thermometer, if not a means to self-diagnosis? But the home test that started the trend was the pregnancy kit, 20 years ago: these still account for more than half the sales in the self-test market. Pregnancy tests are now so successful that few GPs bother to repeat a test on women who have had a positive result from one. In other words, the test is accepted by the medical establishment.
This is the industry's main defence. Simon Driscoll, of Personal Screening, which makes home-test kits, says the whole thrust of healthcare policy in recent decades has been to empower people to monitor their own health. "No one is suggesting that someone with symptoms should buy a kit instead of going to the doctor," he says. "But for those who are aware of their health, and want to keep an eye on something, there is a role for this sort of product."
Various government initiatives seem to be fuelling the testing boom: this week's white paper, with its proposals for health MoTs, will probably be welcomed by the screening industry. And introducing home-test kits on the NHS for certain groups - from April there will be a scheme to mail out bowel cancer kits to over-60s - is another step towards "normalising" the idea that health checks can be done at home.
Two other recent changes have made the market more receptive. Since 2004, the sector has been properly regulated and under new contracts, pharmacists get financial incentives for promoting well-being and offering and stocking self-check tests for cholesterol and bowel cancer.
However, Dr Sue Wilson, an epidemiologist who has just received funding from Cancer Research UK to study the use of self-testing kits, is concerned. For instance, she says, cancer tests may alert people to health problems they can't do anything about. "Some prostate cancers, for example, are slow-growing, and sufferers tend to live with it and die of something else," she says.
Wilson is also worried that other tests could take the health establishment by surprise: one new kit being developed measures a chemical in a woman's saliva as a marker for breast cancer. Another, called the carcinoembryonic antigen test, tests a blood sample for a catch-all marker for malignancy. Imagine opening a letter over the breakfast table that says there is a high chance that a tumour is lurking somewhere - and it could be anywhere - inside your body. Frightening, isn't it?
