Personalized medicine continues to climb the hype cycle. I have been getting most of the best news coverage on the subject from blogs.
- Bertalan Meskó reviews companies focused on personalized medicine (see part I and II)
- Attila Csordas and Deepak Singh cover the social aspects of personal health and the tie-in to 23andMe
- Gareth Palidwor reads into the details to speculate that the business model of 23andMe might be to sell the aggregated user data.
- Gene Sherpas puts on the brakes, describing the hype as Genomic Voyeurism
I am concerned that all the attention the genomics side of personalized medicine will distort the relative importance of nature versus nurture. Everyone craves for a peek at their own destiny and at their roots. These services hope to provide both of these by looking at our DNA. I don't think they can really do this reliably but nothing stops them from luring people.