Personalised medicine: all the screenings
This piece from the Vancouver Sun exaggerates the current level of usefulness of genetic tests, but is spot on about the problems of scale
“As a diagnostic tool, personal genomics is invaluable for selecting therapies, but this whole screening issue opens up another can of worms,” said Lynd. “With the new economies of scale … it is just as easy to look for everything as it is to look for the one thing you need to know.”
Every cancer patient sent for a full genome analysis to determine which variant of breast cancer she has, could potentially become a patient for any or all of the other diseases indicated on their genome and the subject of a whole series of expensive tests to disprove the presence of an illness.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »