Curing Diversity

[Guest guest]

This is a thought-provoking essay on the upcoming wave of genetics

based drug marketing and politics. (It has nothing to do with neuro

diversity yowling). -Lenny

http://is.gd/9w7T

Curing Diversity

By W. Huber

City Journal | Friday, November 28, 2008

Life is unfair, and while others have suspected as much before,

biochemists can now prove it. You have colon cancer—possibly because a

flawed APC gene failed to produce the protein that helps prevent the

disease. When the cancer spreads to your liver, you need Pfizer's

Camptosar. But if you're the one-in-ten patient with a flawed UGT1A1

gene—find out with a Food and Drug Administration–approved test

kit—you lack an enzyme to purge the drug from your body before it

accumulates to toxic levels. Your oncologist may be able to adjust the

dose so you can take Camptosar anyway. Or maybe not.

Washington can't help. The Fourteenth Amendment doesn't guarantee

equal protection at the pharmacy. No privacy-protecting,

discrimination-banning law, no promise that someone else will pay,

will ensure that a drug that suits others will suit your genetic

profile too. If Pfizer can't make a gentler Camptosar, it will only do

business with tougher patients. Meet " pharmacogenomics " —eugenics for

drugs.

http://is.gd/9w7T

[Guest guest]

An interest excerpt. This speaks to the risky nature of vaccines,

too. It leads me to think that those who pushed for vaccine civil

suit protection (pharma) with its pseudo no-fault court, will and have

pushed for the same privilege protection for all drugs. - Lenny

" Meanwhile, scientists had been excavating the biochemical constructs

of [genetic] diversity. What they found was (and remains) alarming:

with tens of thousands of bystander molecules inside each patient, and

no two patients quite the same, any drug that targets human chemistry

and gets widely prescribed will almost inevitably sideswipe some

innocents. "