Medicine tailored to your genome, not your race: Venter

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — Personalised, genome-based health care could help prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths caused each year by adverse drug reactions, genetics pioneer Craig Venter said Tuesday.

A new era of affordable gene sequencing will also render obsolete the practice of testing drugs on various ethnic groups, he said in a commentary, published by the London-based Nature Publishing Group.

Currently, clinical trials for medications often compare results across different racial groups.

One new compound, BiDil, is specifically designed for African Americans with heart disease.

Venter and three scientists from the Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland vigorously defend the focus on minorities in drug studies, but argue that race-based medicine...