A Word from your Geneticist

[Frank_Stein]

It didn't help that the porta-gene was incredibly easy to steal and there was a big genetics hate movement going on back then. Even if you DID try to use it for the intended purpose of going to the marketplace and activating random people's potential powers, some asshole would just toolbox you and then pull your portagene off to the crusher.

This combined with the fact that the port-a-gene replaced most of the stationary gene scanners already there.

To be honest though, the way activators work nowadays makes the port-a-gene irrelevant