The Benefits of Whole-Genome Sequencing Now and in the Future

摘要

Growing attention has been paid to the concept of 'precision' or 'personalized' medicine, buoyed recently in the US by President Obama's commitment to large-scale genomics [Collins and Varmus, 2015]. While there has been considerable enthusiasm in many spheres, the movement has not been without vocal opponents.In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed piece entitled 'Why whole-genome testing hurts more than it helps' (http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-welch-problems-predictive-medicine-20150428-story.html), Drs. H. Gilbert Welch, Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, and Wylie Burke, Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington, argue that investing in genomics in the way President Obama describes is a misguided approach, largely because the 'research is bound to produce more noise than signal'. In other words, there are too many variables and too many different combinations of genomic and clinical data to detect meaningful patterns.