The Pros And Cons Of Individualized Medicine

Individualized medicine is taking different approaches when it comes to diagnosing and treating each patient based on their genome at birth, lifestyle and environment. Instead of having a standard way of caring for all patients, individualized medicine takes it a step further in just looking at a specific patient, who is clearly unique from every other patient. Patients no longer want to be thrown in the same boat as everyone else and want a more tailored medicine that fits them. It’s an approach that emphasizes and highlights that each disease risk will be looked at as if it is one of its kind. This makes it realistic enough to connect with the other more obvious characteristics that are specifically given to a person that makes them who they

But, what most fail to recognize is that the same drug won’t work for all patients because some have other medical problems. For example, some patients might be taking other medications for different illnesses and the combination of the medications won’t make the standard impact it is supposed to. To break it down a little further, the prescribed medication can be toxic and not beneficial to group A, but not toxic and beneficial for group B. So, that is where personalized medicine comes to play. Dr. Handelsman, a researcher from Cornell University puts it this way, “Precision medicine is about moving beyond [the] one-size-fits-all approach to medicine and, instead, taking into account people’s genes, their microbiomes, their environments, and their lifestyles” (p.g 1). The most important thing to know about individualized medicine is that it is put into effect to treat the person, NOT THE DISEASE! Doctors will first analyze the patient’s genetics before deciding on what to do. A decision will be made based off what drugs will work best with a patient's genes. Doctors use pharmacogenomics, which is the study of how genes affect the way medicine works in an individuals body to lead to individualized medicine. If medical professionals know how the medication

Individualized medicine should be strictly used for health preventions, but some fear that people might abuse this information by using it to find potential partners. There isn’t a doubt that the advanced technology won’t change the culture, but will it be in a positive way if people decide to use it to find their “perfect” partner in life? Another reason why many oppose the idea of individualized medicine is because they fear who will control the sequencing information. If they don’t have control of their own data information, will the government? This topic gets discussed heavily because currently individuals aren’t allowed to access their own genetic information, and many wonder if that will change if the new system is implemented in the daily lives of people (Patel, 2015, p.g 1) Also, the amount of genetic information the DNA sequencing would provide would be a vast amount, so the data would need to be stored in a secured place in order to prevent cyber-attacks from occurring. Even though individualized medicine will reduce costs, but it will cost money to transition into this new method. It will cost money to store the information and would need more educated people in the field to analyze the