Seven Questions for Personalized Medicine
By Michael J. Joyner & Nigel Paneth,
JAMA
| 06. 22. 2015
Personalized or precision medicine maintains that medical care and public health will be radically transformed by prevention and treatment programs more closely targeted to the individual patient. These interventions will be developed by sequencing more genomes, creating bigger biobanks, and linking biological information to health data in electronic medical records (EMRs) or obtained by monitoring technologies. Yet the assumptions underpinning personalized medicine have largely escaped questioning. In this Viewpoint, we seek to stimulate a more balanced debate by posing 7 questions for the advocates of personalized medicine.
DOES THE HUMAN GENOME CONTRIBUTE TO DISEASE RISK PREDICTION?
Personalized medicine builds on the Human Genome Project, which was forecasted to revolutionize disease risk prediction, with projected relative risks as high as 6 for gene variants linked to specific diseases. However, the relative risks for the vast majority of gene variants rarely exceed 1.5, and these variants have added little useful predictive power to traditional risk prediction algorithms. Moreover, improved adherence with lifestyle interventions expected to result from the provision of genomic risk information to patients has not materialized.1
WILL GENE-BASED...
Related Articles
By Diaa Hadid and Shweta Desai, NPR | 01.29.2026
MUMBRA, India — The afternoon sun shines on the woman in a commuter-town café, highlighting her almond-shaped eyes and pale skin, a look often sought after by couples who need an egg to have a baby.
"I have good eggs,"...
By George Janes, BioNews | 01.12.2026
A heart attack patient has become the first person to be treated in a clinical trial of an experimental gene therapy, which aims to strengthen blood vessels after coronary bypass surgery.
Coronary artery bypass surgery is performed to treat...
By Staff, ScienceDaily | 01.05.2026
Scientists at UNSW Sydney have developed a new form of CRISPR technology that could make gene therapy safer while also resolving a decades-long debate about how genes are switched off. The research shows that small chemical markers attached to DNA
...
Following a long-standing CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year.
In 2025, we published up to four posts every month, written by 12 authors (staff, consultants and allies), some in collaboration and one simply credited to CGS.
These titles are presented in chronological order, except for three In Memoriam notices, which follow. Many more posts that are worth your time can be found in the archive. Scroll down and “VIEW...
