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Personalized Medicine: Lagging Promise?

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Personalized medicine, tailored to your genes, promised a lot. We look at what it has delivered.

Boston University School of Medicine researchers perform a test to measure a genetic change inside patients' windpipes to try to tell which smokers are at the highest risk of developing lung cancer. (AP)
Boston University School of Medicine researchers perform a test to measure a genetic change inside patients' windpipes to try to tell which smokers are at the highest risk of developing lung cancer. (AP)

A decade ago, it seemed like a miracle. The first draft of the human genome was unveiled. The very code of human life.  And a revolution looked sure to follow.

We would read our genome and know - each of us - our genetic fate. And then, we would know how to change it - with personalized medicine tailored to whatever disease and risk factors we faced.

It is still a miracle. And that revolution may yet come. But it has not arrived on the timetable imagined when our genetic blueprints were first laid out. 
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:

Nicholas Wade, science reporter for the New York Times.

Vicki Seyfert-Margolis, senior advisor on Science Innovation and Policy for the FDA Commissioner’s Office.  She's in Boston this week to attend the Personalized Medicine conference. See video of her chatting with On Point back stage.

Misha Angrist, assistant professor at Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, and author of "Here is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics." He was the fourth subject to have his entire genome sequenced for the Personal Genome Project.  See his data results here.

Hank Greely, bioethicist and director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University.

This program aired on November 18, 2010.

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