BOSTON/NEW YORK – US President Barack Obama’s administration recently issued an appeal for ideas to advance its “precision medicine initiative,” which will channel millions of federal research dollars toward efforts to tailor clinical treatment to individual patients. The idea of personalized medicine, which builds on dramatic advances in genetics and molecular biology, certainly sounds appealing – and not only in the United States, but also in Britain and elsewhere. Unfortunately, the assumption that precision medicine will benefit public health by improving clinical practice does not hold up.
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