Why Personalized Medicine?

There’s no doubt that mankind is advancing in leaps and bounds in all spheres, and when it comes to medicine, advancement is absolutely imperative if we are too keep ahead of the new diseases that are constantly plaguing us. If we consider it on a deeper level, personalized medicine is something that would benefit each of us, if we had the wherewithal to pay for the expense that it entails. In essence, it boils down to analyzing our gene sequence and deciding on the best treatment that our bodies are likely to respond to.

Personalized medicine will pave the way for the more effective treatment of diseases like diabetes and coronary issues, illnesses that are based on hereditary factors and our gene sequence. If we were to explain it in layman’s terms, it’s like going to an exclusive tailor and getting a suit custom-made for your size and shape without having to resort to buying one off the shelf, one that is often ill-fitting either over the shoulders or around the waist and hips. We don’t have too much control or say in what we buy directly from the store – the closest we can get to control is to buy a size that we think is right for us, one that does not really fit the way we would like it to.

Personalized medicine is good because it is preventive in nature; it helps prevent hereditary conditions rather than try to maintain and cure them after they manifest in our bodies. While it may be expensive initially, if personalized medicine advances through continued research, the healthcare industry will be able to save a huge amount of dollars in money spent on treating diabetes and other hereditary diseases that cripple and even kill.

Some forms of personalized medicine are already here to stay – drugs that attempt to change your genetic predisposition to certain diseases are already on the market and come with warning tags that are supposed to prevent other people, those without these genetic markers, from taking them.

It’s a nascent field, one that holds much promise, and if allowed to grow, will prove to be a boon to mankind.

By-line:

This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of nurse practitioner schools . Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson1@gmail.com

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