Kim's birthday is Friday (he will be either thirty-two or thirty-three, his exact date of birth being among the many North Korean mysteries), and the nuclear test might be something of a sensational early gift to himself.
If that's not true, a Labour government's first NHS test might be in court.
"Just the threat of a test might be enough to discourage it," Davis said.
Bottom line: A DXA test might be something you need quite rarely…or pretty often.
That test might be met by some of the measures now being considered, like intercepting computer communications among suspected terrorists.
Or a patent might be granted years after the first scientific publication and companies already offering the test might be asked to stop.
The fact that patients who could benefit from a life-saving test might be harmed waiting for it seems beside the point.
The acid test might be to survey sibling-deprived adults to determine whether they followed family tradition by having only one child.
Still, Cowan said, most lab directors are careful to build a case against an athlete on much more than just one positive test, no matter how definitive a single test might be.
— When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ½-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost?
But even a loaded test might be pounced on as evidence that the judgments of wine experts are, as Adam Sage put it in his Times of London piece, "little more than self-delusion".
