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Magazine

The precision medicine issue

November 2018

Medicine is becoming hyper-personalized, hyper-accurate… and hyper-unequal.

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Letter from the editor

Editor’s letter: The precision medicine issue

Features

Categorized in Biotechnology
Two sick children and a $1.5 million bill: One family’s race for a gene therapy cure
One day, gene therapy may help with the rarest of diseases. Some parents aren’t waiting.
Categorized in
Sociogenomics is opening a new door to eugenics
New ways of using your genetic data could bolster scientific racism and encourage discrimination.
Categorized in Artificial intelligence
Your next doctor’s appointment might be with an AI
A new wave of chatbots are replacing physicians and providing frontline medical advice—but are they as good as the real thing?
Categorized in Biotechnology
We can now customize cancer treatments, tumor by tumor
But can any company afford to manufacture one-off medical care?
Categorized in Humans and technology
The smartphone app that can tell you’re depressed before you know it yourself
Analyzing the way you type and scroll can reveal as much as a psychological test.
Categorized in Humans and technology
Digital immortality: How your life’s data means a version of you could live forever
Your family and friends will be able to interact with a digital “you” that doles out advice—even when you’re gone.
Categorized in Biotechnology
Want to know when you’re going to die?
Your life span is written in your DNA, and we’re learning to read the code.

Also in this issue
- Your genome, on demand
  How your detailed genetic profile can predict your risk of diseases and improve your health.
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- AI can’t replace doctors. But it can make them better.
  A machine can collate environmental data, genetic data, and patient history way better than I can.
  Categorized in 17035
- Look how far precision medicine has come
  Skeptics say drugs based on genetic insights have underdelivered. But look carefully and they’re everywhere.
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- DNA databases are too white. This man aims to fix that.
  Carlos D. Bustamante’s hunt for genetic variations between populations should help us better understand and treat disease.
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- Need medical help? Sorry, not until you sign away your privacy
  When you’re sick, you’re vulnerable—and that’s when your doctor pressures you into participating in a data-gathering experiment.
  Categorized in 17035
- The skeptic: What precision medicine revolution?
  The benefits of genomic drugs are exaggerated, hurting patients and the practice of medicine, says one high-profile oncologist.
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- Profiles in precision medicine
  Advances in DNA testing and gene editing have given people choices that would have been impossible a few decades ago. Here, in their own words, are the stories of four people confronted with these dilemmas.
  Categorized in 17035
- Designer babies aren’t futuristic. They’re already here.
  Are we designing inequality into our genes?
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- Six things to do with your data before you die
  How to make sure your loved ones can get into all your accounts. Or, alternatively—how to cover your tracks.
  Categorized in 17035
- Finally, the drug that keeps you young
  Anti-aging pioneer Judith Campisi explains how a recent breakthrough could ward off age-related disease.
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- Genes I wish they would find
  Enough with the useless genes. Here are some that would actually come in handy.
  Categorized in Biotechnology

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