The Terry Fox Research Institute’s West Coast Dialogue: are we prepared for personalized medicine?

摘要

This meeting report is the second in a series by the Terry Fox Research Institute about its Pan-Canadian Dialogue Series on Cancer: Let's Get Personal , a public research and outreach project. The inaugural dialogue was held in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, in April 2010 on the thirtieth anniversary of the Marathon of Hope. That dialogue launched a continuing conversation that the Institute is having with the Canadian public during 2010. This report summarizes the dialogue held at Simon Fraser University's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in Vancouver, May 12, 2010: "Are We Prepared for Personalized Medicine?" The world is in the midst of a technology renaissance that will change medical practices and improve cancer treatment for every individual. Do we know how society will be affected by personalized medicine over the coming decades? Members of the medical and scientific communities in British Columbia and the public, including cancer survivors, patients, and caregivers, discussed the challenges that lie ahead for Canadians-ethically, economically, socially, clinically, and from a health management perspective-in preparing for personalized medicine, which some experts predict to be fewer than five years away. New technology, including advances in dna sequencing, will require tough choices and decisions to be made by society, and values will be at the centre of those decisions. The directions taken will change health care as we know it today. Issues such as societal values, freedom of information, access, consent, and having personal genomic information literally at our fingertips will form the heart of the discussion.