A new book argues that genomics is overshadowing environmental and social solutions to better health for all
During the past two decades or so, personalized medicine has gotten a lot of hype. The promise is this: researchers can use a person’s genetic data to help guide disease treatment and, in some cases, extend that person’s life expectancy when they are sick.
The vision of personalized medicine that was portrayed to the public from about 1997 to 2007 was that [researchers] took your genome and, in return, gave you a tailor-made drug. Precision medicine is just a personalized medicine [rebranding that was done] by the genetics community in 2011 because they were concerned that the language of “personalized” was confusing people. Now there are two confusing terms out there, neither of which are entirely accurate.
The things that lead to most illness and death in society––forms of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] or obesity––this personalized medicine stuff is not going to help them. [But people who have these conditions] are being lured by doctors and pharmaceutical companies into a view that it will. For instance, researchers are going into communities of color and saying, “Help us battle racial health disparities by giving us your DNA.
The drugs cost lots of money because they’re going to a smaller number of people, compared with the cost of giving the same drug to everyone. It tends to disadvantage people who are already marginalized because now they’ve got this additional economic barrier.
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