Drifting Away from Informed Consent in the Era of Personalized Medicine
        
            By Erik Parens, 
                The Hastings Center Report
             | 07. 07. 2015
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            The   price of sequencing all the DNA in a person's genome is falling
 so fast   that, according to one biotech leader, soon it won't cost 
much more   than flushing a toilet.1
 Getting all that genomic data at an ever-lower cost excites the   
imaginations not only of biotech investors and researchers but also of  
 the President and many members of Congress.2 They envision the data ushering in an age of “personalized medicine,” where medical care is tailored to persons’ genomes.
 
  Since   the 1990 start of the project to map the human genome, 
sequencing   advocates have been predicting our imminent arrival in the 
Promised Land   of Health. In 2000, when Francis Collins shared in 
announcing the   completion of a first draft of a human genome sequence,
 he said that we   now possessed the “book of life.”3
 Soon, he foresaw, we would find single misspelled words in that book   
that would be the keys to diagnosing, treating, and preventing both   
common and rare diseases.
 
  Since 2000, researchers have actually   achieved some stunning 
successes in personalized medicine, including   making some definitive...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
      Related Articles
    
  
          
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
            
                  
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Abby McCloskey,  The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as goes a line in Wallace O. Chariton’s Texas dictionary This Dog’ll Hunt. Lately, I’ve been wondering what this ethos...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Jay S. Kaufman,  Los Angeles Review of Books | 09.27.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            This is the 10th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present. The series is organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Julia Black,  MIT Technology Review | 10.16.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            Consider, if you will, the translucent blob in the eye of a microscope: a human blastocyst, the biological specimen that emerges just five days or so after a fateful encounter between egg and sperm. This bundle of cells, about the size of...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Meagan Parrish,  PharmaVoice | 10.10.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            When CEO Ben Lamm steps into the spotlight, it’s usually to talk about his efforts bringing extinct animals back to life. Once a far-flung idea, Lamm and the company he heads, Colossal Biosciences, have proven they can pull it off...