Guest blog
From the first minute the self-absorbed man began to shrink in the 1950’s cult movie classic The Incredible Shrinking Man, I hoped one day that in addition to zooming into space where no man had gone before, we might begin exploring the multiple universes inside our bodies.
Now the idea has arrived. Universes such as the immune system, the endocrine system, the function and limits of any number of organs are in exploration stages as well as that one part of the human body totally left out of medical exploration until the Iraq War—the human brain.
So the recent initiative launched by the Obama Administration to advance the cause of personalized patient medicines should be cause to celebrate for Catholics, but with one caveat: only if research moves toward advancing the common good.
A slogan from a Naval Intelligence T-Shirt once read, “In God we trust, all others we monitor,” speaks volumes. If we are to launch any initiative of this magnitude not seen since the Space program, then it should by definition be one that all can lay claim to.
According to a recent article by the American Society for the Advancement of Science, “The precision medicine initiative proposed by President Barack Obama last week would center on a huge new biobank containing medical records and genetic information for perhaps a million Americans. It would not be created from scratch by enrolling new volunteers, however, but would instead pull together existing studies into one giant database.”
President Obama explained what precision medicine is: delivering the right treatments, at the right time, to the right patient. Adding that, “Such an approach “gives us one of the greatest opportunities for new medical breakthroughs that we have ever seen.”
With support going to all the right agencies such as the National Cancer Institute, National Institute for Health, and any number of private institutions, it brings together existing studies already in progress and that is a breakthrough in itself. The chances of spotting trends and the cause of diseases magnifies.
“So if we have a big data set—a big pool of people that’s varied—then that allows us to really map out not only the genome of one person, but now we can start seeing connections and patterns and correlations that helps us refine exactly what it is that we’re trying to do with respect to treatment,” explained President Obama.
Thanks to his Affordable Care Act, it is illegal for an insurance company to deny you coverage based on your genetic code. But it is not impossible to imagine that insurance companies and others in private industry will seek ways to exploit the genome sequencing future for profit.
The right of every American to be able to afford to buy these designer medicines must be protected. The role of Catholics in safeguarding the rights of all to such advances cannot be overemphasized. Catholics should insist that such advances reach toward the common good.
And as we begin such an exciting new era of scientific endeavor, let’s just make sure we boldly all go together.
Flickr image cc by Duncan Hull
