Precision Medicine and the Reinvention of Human Disease (not just the genome)

If you believe the lay press, Precision Medicine involves sequencing a patient ' s genome and determining the proper treatment based on the individual ' s unique genetic attributes. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) seems to be encouraging this interpretation of the field. From the US National Institutes of Health comes the following description: " Precision Medicine is an emerging approach for disease prevention and treatment that takes into account people ' s individual variations in genes, environment, and lifestyle. The Precision Medicine Initiative will generate the scientific evidence needed to move the concept of Precision Medicine into clinical practice " . An Advisory Committee to the NIH Director would include, under the mantle of Precision Medicine, " providing individual side-effect profiles of drugs, and preventative health care check-ups that include specific recommendations developed from interpreting an individual ' s genetic risk profile " .Between the millions of inter-individual variations in our genomes, the highly personalized lifestyle choices, and the differences in our environments, there seems to be plenty of uniqueness to spread around. It is easy to forget that our uniqueness as individuals often has much less to do with our diseases than does our sameness as members of the same species. Our sameness goes a long way toward explaining why humans seem to suffer from the same list of textbook diseases, regardless of their individualized genes and...
Source: Specified Life - Category: Information Technology Tags: definition genomics individualized treatments precision medicine Source Type: blogs