Dr George Church,
Harvard Medical School,
helped to develop the
first direct genomic
sequencing method and
the human genome
project;
he explains the
importance of personalised medicine: “I think
this is something easy
to misunderstand, in
that 100% of the people are at risk of some
disease; this doesn’t
mean that everybody
has it, but they don’t
know until they get
genetically tested. As
the price comes down,
it seems an obvious
choice to find out if
you do have a genetic disease, for
example
breast
c a n c e r ”.
H e
describes
the process
of testing the
presence
of
genetic diseases:
“genetic material in your file, not
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requiring family history, as many people are
the first person in their
family that have diseases, can therefore be
stored until symptoms
present themselves or
doctors can act on the
genetic
information
that has been discovered”. This evidence of
new ways to quickly
act upon genetic diseases such as cancer
and therefore decrease
the chance of a morality. To have access to
this information will
also enable parents to
dis-