The Problem With Personalized Medicine 216
gManZboy writes "Talk of individually tailored medical treatment isn't pie in the sky. This approach eventually will help us address risk factors even before a disease can invade our cells, and detect preclinical disease before it gets out of hand. What role will medical informatics play in this brave new world? Hint: Little data projects may be as important as big data projects such as gene sequencing. At a recent symposium on personalized medicine, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health at the University of Pennsylvania, questioned whether it would make more sense to target all the lifestyle mistakes that patients make rather than analyze genetic defects. His view: 'Personalized medicine misses the most important fact about modern society--little ill health and premature death is genetic, much more is lifestyle and social.' Is Emanuel a dinosaur or a pragmatist?"
Re:There would be no healthcare crisis in the U.S. (Score:4, Informative)
So ban HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup). It's a vicious cycle - HFCS suppresses the hormone that tells you you're full, so you keep on eating more food with HFCS, further suppressing the "Hey Dummy, Stoppppp!" signal.
Pigs eat corn to fatten up. It has the same long-term effects on humans.
Re:There would be no healthcare crisis in the U.S. (Score:3, Informative)
Give it another few years for Obamacare to come all the way online, and there may well be. ;)
(oblig. "I'll probably get modded down for this.")
Probably. The rest of the modern world all look after the basic medical needs of people, it's pretty much only the US that lets people die because they have no money.
I came in to say the same thing Tsingi, there already is a healthcare crisis in the US, and anyone who tells themselves otherwise needs to do some research. The US has been behind in healthcare for years.