Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health | 
pick#NerdStatus activated 🤓, but this is an important read. I never gave a second thought to the development of medicine that targets people with certain genetic codes. If you‘re American, you‘ve probably seen ads on TV. But Tabery made me rethink on two fronts. First, cost of taking these drug versus outcome is often not favorable. Second, the study of genetics in populations has come at the cost of environmental studies that may help a larger ⬇️
Megabooks population of people and could create bigger impacts on marginalized folks. He definitely gave me a lot to consider! 1y
KathyWheeler I‘m really interested in reading this as it seems like having a medicine that is specifically targeted to work for you could be beneficial, but I can see the other side of the argument as well. 1y
Megabooks @KathyWheeler yes, I thought all these cancer medicines that target certain genotypes automatically were better drugs than traditional chemo. But that isn‘t always the case. Often survival time is only a few more months and costs balloon to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least for us in the US. They often augment traditional chemo so you don‘t necessarily get fewer side effects or a better quality of life for those months. 🤷🏻♀️ 1y
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Megabooks @KathyWheeler I think it‘s a more complicated situation than I initially thought. And that‘s just on the use side. The other half is whether the resources allocated by the public sector to make these large gains in the private sector are worth it in what is being defunded. 1y
KathyWheeler @Megabooks It sounds like it. I‘m moving this up on my list. (edited) 1y
willaful This reminds me of whenever there's big excitement over a new invention that helps disabled people walk up stairs and invariably its a huge complicated expensive thing that no disabled people ever asked for and almost certainly wouldn't be able to get instead of something that would generally help a lot of disabled people. 1y
Megabooks @willaful lol. There‘s a simple machine that‘s really helpful: an inclined plane. 😂 physics joke! My mom had polio as a child and walked with crutches until her late 50s and has since used a scooter, so I heard a lot of balderdash over the years, too. 🙄 1y