The genomics era allows us to understand the machinery that is responsible for our health, our welfare, and our well-being.
The initial views of personalized medicine are that, because we are mostly genetically the same but there are small differences, it's those small differences that change the way, for example, we would respond to a certain drug. If we could actually understand those to the point where your physician would be able to say, “You should take this therapeutic instead of that one because I know that this one you'll respond to and that one you won't”....
That's sort of the initial stage, and we're starting to see evidence of that now just from the sheer volume of genetic information we have. We hear about initiatives around the world like the $1,000 genome. You'd be able to map each individual's genome for $1,000. We're not there yet, but when we are there and when we learn how to mine the information—and I want to refer to Dr. Hewitt when I say this—and when we understand how we're going to manage that information....
There are huge social issues related to somebody else having my entire genome in their hands, but those are the types of advances we'll see over the next decade or two or three. I think that will fundamentally change the way we approach health care and wellness.