Eric Juengst, "From 'Personalized to 'Precision' Medicine" (lunch workshop)

Eric Juengst, "From 'Personalized to 'Precision' Medicine" (lunch workshop)
April 13, 2015 - 12:30 PM

Eric Juengst is  Director of the UNC Center for Bioethics and Professor in the Department of Social Medicine and the Department of Genetics at UNC Chapel Hill. From 1990 to 1994, he served as the first Chief of the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Branch of the National Center for Human Genome Research at the U.S. NIH, and from 2005-2010 he directed the Center for Genetic Research Ethics and Law at CWRU, an NIH supported “Center of Excellence in Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Research.”

"From 'Personalized to 'Precision' Medicine: What's in a Name?"

Lunch/workshop, Monday, April 13, 2015; 12:30-2:00, CHHS 128

Due to limited seating, please RSVP here by Tuesday, April 7th.

Abstract: “Personalized Genomic Medicine” reigned for a decade after the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2001 as the banner under which the promoters of genomic research and its clinical translation rallied. Now the branding has changed to “Precision Medicine,” and that new banner has been taken to all the way to the White House. What lies behind this rhetorical shift, and what might its implications be for patients and communities as genomic technologies become integrated within healthcare? This presentation reports findings from a study of the evolution of genomic medicine that suggest two shifts in its priorities: away from “patient empowerment” as a cardinal virtue, and away from “individualized therapy” as a goal. Instead, genomic medicine now aspires to provide experts with tools to better classify patients into population-based risk groups, re-raising concerns over the social hazards that have attended such efforts in the past.