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Drug Tests
ByAlexander Gelfand looks at the future of medicine:
...the potential usefulness of pharmocogenetics extends beyond safety. Most drugs on the market are, by some accounts, only effective for 50 percent of those who take them. Researchers envision a time when you’ll be able to walk into your doctor’s office and have him or her conduct a simple test to determine whether this or that drug will work best for you, given the presence (or absence) of specific genetic variations the age of designer drugs. Combine that with genetic testing that reveals predispositions toward particular diseases, and you have a future in which medical science could circumvent potential problems by intervening even before symptoms appear. But we’re not there yet.
