
Mapping the Human Exposome - dnetesn
http://alliance.nautil.us/article/242/mapping-the-human-exposome
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reasonattlm
Personalized medicine is great if you want to charge people a lot of money for
marginal results, or if you are in the sciences and your goal is full
understanding of everything in human biochemistry.

But all the real, meaningful goals in medicine are basically the same for
everyone, barring the very, very tiny number of people with serious genetic
abnormalities. And even in their small genetically abnormal groups, the reason
for their issues are the same for everyone with the same specific mutation.

99.99% of the population ages and suffers age-related disease for exactly same
underlying reasons. The molecular damage is exactly the same. Ditto the
pathogens that cause infectious disease. You tailor medicine to the pathogens,
to the molecular damage, to the mutated gene in an inherited condition, not to
the person. Rejecting personalized medicine is the most cost-effective way to
proceed towards mass-manufactured, low-cost, effective medicine.

Fix the inherited diseases with gene therapy. Repair the molecular damage that
causes aging. Build the technologies that effectively destroy pathogens. Don't
focus on the tiny variations in individual responses to these things before
you try to actually address the root of the problem. This is my complaint
about personalized medicine in a nutshell: it is displacement activity,
distracting from paths that will be far, far more effective in improving
health and addressing medical conditions.

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AlexCoventry
> But all the real, meaningful goals in medicine are basically the same for
> everyone

I think your view is a bit narrow. For instance if you get cancer, the goal is
"cure MY cancer." And like unhappy families, many cancers are broken in unique
ways.

You might find the abstracts here interesting:

[http://www.immuno-oncologysummit.com/Personalized-Cancer-
Vac...](http://www.immuno-oncologysummit.com/Personalized-Cancer-Vaccines/)

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alexandercrohde
This is nothing short of a potential revolution. There are a wide number of
illness in humans we don't understand, and have been making almost no progress
on.

For example near-sightedness. We know it's more than genetic because rates
have been skyrocketing, and we know time spent outdoors means lower rates of
myopia, but that's about it...

