Say the words “personalized medicine” to people from various walks of life, and you’re like to get one of about four different reactions.
A. “Personalized medicine? What’s that?” (Usually spoken by 99 percent of patients.)
B. “Personalized medicine will bankrupt the country with expensive new diagnostic tests, and overrated targeted drugs.” (Usually spoken by health economists.)
C. “Personalized medicine is overhyped, a load of bunk.” (Usually spoken by grizzled pharma industry vets who remember the genomics crash of a decade ago, and have a financial interest in preserving the status quo.)
D. “Personalized medicine will revolutionize healthcare, moving us away from reactive sick-care and more toward predictive and preventive strategies focused on wellness.” (Usually spoken by the subset of true believers in science and the biotech industry.)
You can make arguments, buttressed with data, to support any of the last three positions. But none of these positions quite captures the truth. We are in the early days of the personalized medicine movement, and don’t know how the story will unfold.
View the original article here: Stanford’s Mike Snyder Starts Living the Personalized Medicine Story
