Newswise Personalized medicine has promised to radically change the way we look at health and disease. Talk of tailored drug therapies and early detection of cancer has captured the attention of scientists and lay people alike. So when will patients start to reap the benefits of this medical revolution?

The transition to personalized medicine wont be seamless or swift, says Lee Gutkind, who co-authored "An Immense New Power to Heal: The Promise of Personalized Medicine" (In Fact Books, May 2012) with novelist and science writer Pagan Kennedy. The authors explain the complex world of personalized medicine in an engaging, approachable story-telling style.

Gutkind is the distinguished writer in residence at ASUs Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes (CSPO) and a professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is also the founder and editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction.

In researching the book, Gutkind learned the tremendous potential for personalized medicine, and the obstacles keeping doctors from putting it into practice.

Giving up turf One aspect of personalized medicine involves the use of genetics to get a detailed and accurate picture of human DNA and how it responds to disease. When the first complete human genome was sequenced in 2007, scientists gained insight into how genetic variations can predict certain diseases and disorders. The idea is that having access to genetic information will allow health care providers to take a more preventative approach to caring for patients.

However, physicians are traditionally reluctant to adopt new technologies. Most primary care doctors have little training in genetics, and many have never even heard the term personalized medicine.

When I started this book between 2007 and 2008, I could go to physicians in major medical centers across the United States and say the phrase personalized medicine, and at least half of those people wouldnt even know what it was, Gutkind says. Again and again, I had to define personalized medicine for the people who ought to have known 10 years ago what it meant.

Of the physicians who were aware of personalized medicine, few seemed eager to share their knowledge with colleagues and patients. Even most medical schools have yet to amend the curriculum to include genetics and personalized medicine. Gutkind attributes this to a lack of understanding of the importance and potential of personalized medicine. It also speaks to the physicians unwillingness to give up turf to the field of genetics, an area they may know little about.

We want a revolution in health care, but we are not making the transition, Gutkind says.

The meaning of genes Its understandable that doctors with no training in genetics would be wary of personalized medicine. But Gutkind was surprised to learn that even for a geneticist, garnering useful health information from genetic data is no easy task.

Read more from the original source:
Book Explores the Promise, Pitfalls of Personalized Medicine

Comments are closed.