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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

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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.
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Sociogenomics is opening a new door to eugenics
New ways of using your genetic data could bolster scientific racism and encourage discrimination.
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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?
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We can now customize cancer treatments, tumor by tumor
But can any company afford to manufacture one-off medical care?
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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.
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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.
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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.
  
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- 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.
  
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- Look how far precision medicine has come
  Skeptics say drugs based on genetic insights have underdelivered. But look carefully and they’re everywhere.
  
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- 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.
  
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- 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.
  
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- 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.
  
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- 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.
  
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- Designer babies aren’t futuristic. They’re already here.
  Are we designing inequality into our genes?
  
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- 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.
  
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- Finally, the drug that keeps you young
  Anti-aging pioneer Judith Campisi explains how a recent breakthrough could ward off age-related disease.
  
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- Genes I wish they would find
  Enough with the useless genes. Here are some that would actually come in handy.
  
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