The Burrill Report


The Burrill Report (August 22, 2011): Smoothing Personalized Medicine's Ragged Edge (.MP3,13.99 Mb)

Companion diagnostics used to identify patients who will benefit from specific targeted therapies is raising a growing ethical issue as such treatments proliferate and cost pressures on healthcare systems intensify. How should we, and who should, decide where to draw the line on precisely how responsive a patient will to be to qualify to receive a given therapy? We spoke to Leonard Fleck, a professor at the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences at Michigan State University, about how such decisions will be made, the need to balance the interests of individual patients with societal costs, and what it will take to smooth the ragged edge of personalized medicine.

August 19, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-smoothing_personalized_medicines_ragged_edge.html