Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Thanks To Genome Web: The Challenge to Personalized Medicine


I have long thought about this and remain convinced that Personalized Medicine is the most powerful tool to improve patient outcomes. The paradigm is clear......


In an interview I gave to Berci Mesko at Scienceroll 
a while ago.....I made clear that there is a difference between personalized medicine and personalized genetics.

I know want to make another important distinction......until personal genomes can improve lives by altering current medical care or behaviors known to increase risk of disease, they remain NOT PERSONALIZED MEDICINE!!!

So they should not be lumped into the same category as Personalized Medicine.

They are what they are. Personal Genomics recreational testing.......Unless of course they are giving you data about disease, but that of course is a different animal....

I am in awe of what is going on.

This amounts to quants in a 100 story building in Manhattan arguing about Re-Insurance of assets located in Topeka Kansas.....

This is precisely what got us into the financial mess we are in....

Who knows how things work? The people who do those things on a daily basis? Who "thinks" they know how things work? The people who "created" those statistical things....

Who is right? Well in this case the pragmatic answer is this......

Find a test which replaces the current testing we do to identify risk.....prove it works and then deploy it.....

In the current GenoHype Schema, what we have is backwards..........We deploy tests which haven't been proven to work OR replace current testing for risk stratification.....And hope to hell someone proves them to be correct. But when they are disproven (is that a word?), we write letters to the editor attempting to tear apart the research...In Futility...........

I hope you get my point......DTC Genomics has created a Personalized Medicine Bubble which is set to pop because of overhyped promises......

Francis Collins' statement that "the worst thing we could do for personalized medicine is oversell its promise" is now coming true and the Quants from Biotech may fall just as hard as those from Finance.......

The Sherpa Says: Personalized Consumer Genomics is for recreation. Personalized Medicine IS for Medicine......Let's not mix the 2 please.......


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Who knows how things work?
No one.

Who "thinks" they know how things work?
Steve Murphy.