Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Personalizing Medicine: Futures Present and Past
AU - Tutton, Richard
PY - 2012/11
Y1 - 2012/11
N2 - Since the 1990s, ‘personalized medicine’ has become a powerful language in which to imagine significant change in medicine from a ‘one size fits all’ model to one that tailors prediction, diagnosis and treatment to the individual. Two decades on, personalized medicine remains a contested vision of the future. Drawing on work in the sociology of expectations, I argue that expectations about genomics to bring about a personalized medicine are ‘prefigured’ by other ways in which knowledge about individual specificity and variability have been at the centre of claims and counterclaims about the future of medicine since the 19th century. Examining how and why medical universalism or a ‘one size fits all’ model of medicine has been contested over time, I conclude by considering the limits of what genomics has to offer for personalizing medicine.
AB - Since the 1990s, ‘personalized medicine’ has become a powerful language in which to imagine significant change in medicine from a ‘one size fits all’ model to one that tailors prediction, diagnosis and treatment to the individual. Two decades on, personalized medicine remains a contested vision of the future. Drawing on work in the sociology of expectations, I argue that expectations about genomics to bring about a personalized medicine are ‘prefigured’ by other ways in which knowledge about individual specificity and variability have been at the centre of claims and counterclaims about the future of medicine since the 19th century. Examining how and why medical universalism or a ‘one size fits all’ model of medicine has been contested over time, I conclude by considering the limits of what genomics has to offer for personalizing medicine.
KW - Personalized medicine
KW - Pharmacogenomics
KW - Sociology of expectations
KW - History of medicine
U2 - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.07.031
DO - 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.07.031
M3 - Journal article
VL - 75
SP - 1721
EP - 1728
JO - Social Science and Medicine
JF - Social Science and Medicine
SN - 0277-9536
IS - 10
ER -