For more than two years, Jody Uslan had been taking the drug tamoxifen in hopes of preventing a recurrence of breast cancer. Then a new test suggested that because of her genetic makeup, the drug was not doing her any good.
“I was devastated,” said Ms. Uslan, 52, who stopped taking tamoxifen and is now evaluating alternative treatments. “You find out you’ve been taking this medication for all of this time, and find out you are not getting benefit.”
Ms. Uslan’s situation is all too common — and not just among the hundreds of thousands of women in this country taking tamoxifen.
Experts say that most drugs, whatever the disease, work for only about half the people who take them. Not only is much of the nation’s approximately $300 billion annual drug spending wasted, but countless patients are being exposed unnecessarily to side effects.
No wonder so much hope is riding on the promise of “personalized medicine,” in which genetic screening and other tests give doctors more evidence for tailoring treatments to patients, potentially improving care and saving money.
Many policy experts are calling for more studies to compare the effectiveness of different treatments. One drawback is that such studies tend to be “one size fits all,” with the winning treatment recommended for everybody. Personalized medicine would go beyond that by determining which drug is best for which patient, rather than continuing to treat everyone the same in hopes of benefiting the fortunate few.
More ...http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/30gene.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
