engleski

Personalized Medicine, more harm than good?

After the end of the Human Genome Project, a new era of medical inquiry has begun: Personalized or Precision Medicine. Technology and information is more accessible in all spheres of life, where the individual has taken the spotlight in an often individualistic way of life, and healthcare is not an exception. One may wonder, how is this new way of practicing medicine going to change our view of the human being? Most of the ethical problems arising from personalized medicine have been present for a while yet gain new meaning with the expected universality of personalized medicine projects. Most notably: patient privacy, patient autonomy, access to personalized medicine, DNA patentability, Biobanks, selective termination of pregnancies, medicine babies, and others. In all these issues the problem does not lie in giving patients the best tailor made treatment, which is obviously good. The problems arise when we think about the effects or uses of such medicine, which could easily go astray. For example, in the use of the information available from each patient and the duties that arise from that knowledge. In the instrumentalization of other human beings as a means for acquiring health. The access to treatments and information regarding one’s health, and the discrimination of who can access these, depending notably on socioeconomic status. The problems regarding personalized medicine we see today are only the tip of the iceberg of the problems we will face in the future if we do not stop and understand all the ethical questions that arise from it.

precision medicine, ethics, patient autonomy, patient privacy, biobanks

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