Personalized Medicine - Gregory Stock at WorldFuture 2007

[HawtEskEMO]

great vid

hi anyone want to chat S2

[hunyuanchentaichi]

Good question.

And why do we think that personalized medicine will be a profitable undertaking? Mass production and pathologization is more cost-effective than tailoring drugs to individual needs.

[Mastikator]

It's like owning a golden limo, not everyone can afford it, but that shouldn't mean that those who do should be prohibited from owning them.

Those who do contribute to research to make it cheaper.

I think it would be useful if people stopped thinking in terms of "process has its price" and started thinking in terms of "process has its course".

[hunyuanchentaichi]

I assume you mean "progress" by "process". Progress is a tricky word and the way you put it seems to assume that all we can do is prepare for what is coming anyway. To me that's a little too techno-deterministic.

Anyway, I would never dispute the blessings of modern medicine but I am worried about the growing rate of medicalization.

[hunyuanchentaichi]

Greg Stock is in favor of germline genetic engineering. If we follow your line of argumentation and say that those who can afford it should be allowed to use whatever they wish, then how do you prevent massive social injustice developing between modified and unmodified?

[Mastikator]

It makes no sense to me that everyone should have to suffer because not everyone can have the exact same resources.

There is also a massive social injustice between people who can walk and people who can't. Basically, to argue that non-poor people should be prohibited from personalized medicine is like to argue people who can walk should have their legs cut off to make them equal to crippled people.

[Mastikator]

People of higher life standard should not be brought down to be equal of those of lower life standard if they acquired said life standard through fair means.

It's those at the bottom who should be empowered to lift themselves up by being given the option.

The option for those at the bottom will probably come after the option for those at the top.

It's not about empowering the wealthy, it's simply a fact that the wealthy will have it first (and not exclusively).

[hunyuanchentaichi]

Being or not being able to walk is not a social injustice. It becomes a social injustice if society entirely disregards people who have certain difficulties.

[hunyuanchentaichi]

I think our threads have become a little mixed up.

In relation to personalized medicine: I believe your point is a little too techno-deterministic and drives the already questionable process of medicalization further.

Ad germline engineering, which is rather different from personalized medicine, I just wanted to point out, that simply arguing that those who can should get whatever they wish is by far not a sufficiently refined argument.

[advancedatheist]

How do we afford this futuristic stuff, when we can't afford the current level of healthcare?