Personalized medicine and genome-based treatments: Why personalized medicine ≠ individualized treatments

Clinical Ethics 9 (4):135-144 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The sequencing of the human genome and decreasing costs of sequencing technology have led to the notion of ‘personalized medicine’. This has been taken by some authors to indicate that personalized medicine will provide individualized treatments solely based on one’s DNA sequence. We argue this is overly optimistic and misconstrues the notion of personalization. Such interpretations fail to account for economic, policy and structural constraints on the delivery of healthcare. Furthermore, notions of individualization based on genomic data potentially take us down the road of genetic reductionism obscuring the role of environmental factors in disease and ill health. We propose that one should see personalized medicine as a way of using personal genomic information to stratify individuals into subpopulations and suggest that personalized medicine be seen within a broader idea of personalized healthcare, reflecting healthcare that integrates personal genomic data into cultural, environmental and personal contexts.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,486

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Role of Cloud in Advancing Personalized Healthcare: Leveraging Big Data and AI for Precision Medicine.Deshmukh A. S. - 2025 - International Journal of Advanced Research in Electrical, Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering (Ijareeie) 14 (3):663-668.
Meta-Learning For Personalized Healthcare: Designing Adaptive Models for Precision Medicine In.Aditya Rajneesh Singh Abhishek Bhalotia - 2022 - International Journal of Multidisciplinary and Scientific Emerging Research (Ijmserh) 10 (4):1606-1610.
Ethical Considerations in Personalized Medicine.Smit Patel, Chris Slavin & Raj R. Rao - 2020 - Ethics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine 11 (1):89-93.
Between hype and hope: What is really at stake with personalized medicine?Camille Abettan - 2016 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 19 (3):423-430.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-09-03

Downloads
43 (#552,800)

6 months
12 (#239,387)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?