With so many
advances in medicine in a world and time built on customization, it was only a
matter of time before the two ideas collided. Pharmacogenomics is the study of
how our genes respond to drugs, this information is then used to tailor drug
regiments that are optimized for your genetic makeup. The field is fast growing
and has proven to be very effective in the treatment regiments of certain
cancers as well as certain autoimmune diseases. Now, although this may sound
like an overall benefit it can also be dangerous. President Obama in a recent
White House forum regarding his Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), which aims
to collect genetic data on a million American volunteers for this very purpose,
weighed in saying that discoveries that stem from his DNA should belong to him. “I
would like to think that if somebody does a test on me or my genes, that that’s
mine, but that’s not always how we define these issues,” are the exact words he
used to describe this complex debate and even yet with so much controversy
surrounding the use of our own private genome for science the program still
funded with about $200 million as of December of 2015. Why you may ask? Because
the future of medicine may very well lie in pharmacogenomics. Even the NIH
believe that through advancements in this field the PMI will enable and usher
in a new era of medicine, not just in terms of treatment but also for
prevention strategies. All in all pharmacogenomics is the necessary “evil” of
medicine only when the genetic data necessary for the drug regiments is
misused. However the future is bright, with several government regulation
agencies involved there’s no way that the information provided will be misused.
Or is there?’
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