Benefits to Patients

	Medicine Today

One day in the not-too-distant future, your health care provider may talk to you about obtaining a single blood sample for DNA analysis, the results of which will be recorded in a computer chip on a wallet-sized plastic card. This card will contain specific aspects of your genetic makeup that can be identified as needed. The genetic information contained there may be used in several ways:

• To predict your risk of developing certain diseases, allowing their earlier diagnosis or possible prevention.

• To more accurately diagnose the cause of symptoms or diseases you may experience.

• To help your health care provider more accurately select the medicine most likely to be of benefit and least likely to cause you harm.

• To help scientists more efficiently discover and develop safer, more effective medicines aimed at the root causes of diseases, not just their symptoms.

Medicine in the Future

What might this mean in your life? Perhaps by the time a healthy baby who is born today is a young teenager, doctors will be able to predict his or her chances of developing certain types of cancer, heart disease, migraines, Alzheimer disease or other conditions. This may allow people to do what they can to prevent the diseases they are at risk for (for example, taking calcium during a woman's early teenage years and exercising regularly with weights to help prevent osteoporosis or eating foods or taking supplements known to help prevent heart disease or colon cancer if a genetic risk is present).

Doctors may screen patients more often and more thoroughly for conditions they are prone to, so that the disease can be diagnosed and treated promptly if it occurs. And before prescribing a new medicine, the doctor may be able to order a genetic test to predict how the patient is likely to respond to it!

Like most things, these positive changes stemming from genetics research may have additional considerations, too. There are many ethical, legal and social aspects of genetic research that we must consider and address as individuals and as a society. Each of us will need to learn about genetics so that we can make informed decisions.