Letter from the Publisher ( 11/16/10 )
Dear Reader,
Thank you for visiting the DNAScribe Web site.
DNAScribe’s goal is to work with your Health Insurance Company to bring Personalized Medicine to you and your families. Our goal is to help make it so that this information can be used right now in your physician’s office to predict what diseases or adverse drug responses you may be at risk for.
A dopamine gene variant could be driving a strong or overwhelming interest in drugs, food and sex.
In this emerging science called “personalized medicine,” new genetic knowledge puts you in the driver’s seat of your health and well-being.
For example, if your physician identifies gene variants that place you at higher risk for certain diseases, then he or she can design disease monitoring programs to look for disease related predictive biomarkers early, before the clinical onset of a disease. Having this knowledge also means you have more choices for taking early action to prevent or delay disease onset. This action might be experimental, like making changes in diet or exercise routines, or it might mean taking a drug treatment on a regular basis that is known to prevent the disease you are at risk for.
Your physician can also use information about your gene variants to predict what drugs you may not respond well to or drugs you may have a potential adverse reaction to.
Don’t be surprised if your physician is not familiar with this knowledge. Physicians are learning about personalized medicine right now, just like the rest of us. Some physicians, along with some of the rest of us, will be reluctant to use this new knowledge. However, there is good reason for this reluctance.
Specifically, personalized medicine is still in the beta test phase. Like computers and computer software, we once had to use the new products in order to find out where the bugs were and also find out what applications would offer us the greatest benefit. For most of us, it took a real hands on effort to drive computer industry growth. Today, using computers is a pretty seamless event.
Baby boomers face new choices. Genetic profile knowledge will inform these choices.
Personalized medicine is very similar in this regard. Scientists and physicians need to have patients use personalized medicine in order for them to understand how the new information we are learning about how gene variants, in combination with environmental factors, will influence our health or our response to drugs. They need our help in order to test this knowledge and get it ready for our seamless, everyday use.
One of DNAScribe’s main goals is to help scientists and physicians accomplish this task, by linking them to our readers. For example, if you are reading DNAScribe’s on-line newsletter and you are interested in finding out about studies related to a subject that interests you, we will either provide a direct link to a study on the subject or we will contact scientists for you who might have an interest in starting a study in your interest area.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue of DNAScribe and I look forward to hearing from you in the future!
-Publisher
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