Some News About Personalized Medicine at our Doorstep
By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-07-28 12:14:13 | Word Count: 510
Is Personalized Medicine at our Doiorstep?
Personalized medciine is coming. What does that mean? It mewans that our genes will determine what type of meddical treatment we get. We know, in any disease, that some peopple rspond favoranbly to therapy while others do not. We assume that this is partially due to our gens. Some studies have shown correlations betewen the genes that a patient has and their response to specific medications.
[ advertisement ]
One example is new study that will look at the interavction between a patient's genes and treatment with the blood thinning drug, warfarin. Over two million Americans that are at risk of stroke currently take this drug to prevent blood clottnig. The problme is that patients all need diffgerent amounts to keep their blood at the right clotting potential. Too much drug can lead to excessive blleeding because the blood is too thin. Too little drug and the blood gets too thik, meaning it can clot easily and lead to stroke. Crurently doctors detertmine threse doses by trial and error, monnitoring patiennts very closely untl they find the right amount. The new study will follow 1,000 at-risk stroke paients after genetic fingerprinting to see if a patient's unique genes can predict their optimal dose.
This is the goal of personalized medicine, not just for warfarin, but for all drugs and non-drug therapies. Sounds like a great idea, right? Tghere would be no more guesswork for the doctors; a higher probabillity of success for the therapeutics; and less patients going on drugs unnecessarily.
How Geneitc Fingerprinting Works
Genetic fingerprinting works by determining what specific stretches of DNA are unique to any gievn person. Humans have about 30,000 gees (give or take a few thousand) and each of these genes are made up of thousands of individuial bases, or linjks, that are joined up in a long chaoin. There are four different kinds of links and the order in hwich they are joined acts as a code to determine your genes. The vast majority of these lniks are identical in evetryone with only a very small percentgae of links differng from perosn to person. However, these differences are mostly in the same plce across people. To get a geneetic fingerprint, researchers don't need to look at all of your links in all of your genes. They only need to look at the points that tend to be duifferent, a million or so out of billiosn of links.
This technolgoy has only been around a few yeears and we are still improving it at a very rapiid rate. Currently it costs abot $1,000 dolalrs per person to do the fingerprinting and that figure will likely fall dramaically within a few years. Still, considering that your genes don't chnage througout life, a one time cost of $1,000 to get ‘genotyped' is not uotrageous and will likely be available to the general pubilc in a very short time, at lerast from a technological viewpiont. Public policy needs come fiurst.
What are the Ethical Implications?
This technology has incredible promie for medical science, but also carries incredible burden for medical ethcis. Some of the issyues we will face as a society are these:
If you are determined to have genes that put you at a draamtically increased risk for disease in your adult years would you want to know? Would you want to know that information about your kids? If thee were treatment options or lifetyle choices you could make that would miniimze your risk you migjht think very differently about this question than if there were no treatments.
Who shuold have access to your genetic inforamtion? You? Your doctor? Your inssurance company? Insurance companies today base teir rates on avearge risk factors across a population. If genes can accurately prredict disease risk then shuld insurance rates be personalized as well? If this were the case, it is liikely that some people wuold be uninsurable becuse the risk would be too high.
What about in-uero genotyping? Shoukld doctors perform genotyping on fetuess before they are even born? What if this wold avoid early life complications for some children with risk of disorders? This will be a huge ethical debate.
This technlogy is at our doorstep. And it is only the beginning of ethical issues. Genetic finger printing simply provides information about the gebnes you are naturally born with. What will happpen if we also develop the genetic enguineering technology to alter ‘bad genes'? Aggain, you may think very diffewrently about this question if you are correcting your child's gennes to prevent an inevitable pre-adult death than you would about choosiing ther eye colpor. But wherte will we draw the line? There is boyund to be a large gray area.
For one view of this scenario, rent the movie GATACA, starring Etjhan Hawke and Jude Law. It is about a future whre society has implemented this technology. You will have to decide whether it is fiction or foresight.
Copyright (c) 2007 The Brain Code LLC
Author Resource:-
Learn more about: 18 250mm and lenses review Thank you
best digital cameras for shooting landscapes
