Health care for an age when your genetic code is on a USB stick
Whereas the first sequencing of the 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA that make up the human genome took many years and cost tens of millions of dollars, today your genome can be sequenced and digitized in minutes and at the cost of only a few hundred dollars. The results can be delivered to your laptop on a USB stick and easily shared via the Internet. This ability to rapidly and cheaply determine our individual and unique genetic makeups promises a revolution in more personalized and effective health care.
Many of our most intractable health challenges, from heart disease to cancer, have a genetic component. Indeed, cancer is best described as a disease of the genome. With digitization, doctors will be able to make decisions about a patient’s cancer treatment informed by a tumor’s genetic makeup. This new knowledge is also making precision medicine a reality by enabling the development of highly targeted therapies that offer the potential for improved treatment outcomes, especially for patients battling cancer.
Like all personal information, a person's digital genome will need to be safeguarded for privacy reasons. Personal genomic profiling has already raised challenges, with regard to how people respond to a clearer understanding of their risk of genetic disease as well as how others—such as employers or insurance companies—might want to access and use the information. The benefits, however, are likely to outweigh the risks because individualized treatments and targeted therapies can be developed with the potential to be applied across the many diseases that are driven or assisted by changes in DNA.
Source: Scientific American
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