Let's hear a round of applause for a milestone in U.S. drug development, and for dramatic effect pipe in a little background music from Jerry Lewis singing "Smile," the opening theme song from his annual Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon.
To differentiate itself from competitors, a dating website has partnered with a big data genomics company to conduct proprietary and confidential research, gaining access to health data from millions of people. Customers submit their dream phenotypes, which are matched to digital genotypes, complete with names, addresses and an assortment of customized personal health data. Welcome to Matches Made in Heaven.
A major problem facing people sickened or threatened by neglected diseases is that the for-profit global biopharmaceutical industry sets the agenda for new drug development, and their suffering is not considered worth the investment.
Scientific and ethical justifications for randomized clinical trials involving targeted cancer drugs are outdated and overlook the most significant players in those high stakes experiments – patients coping with an incurable illness.
Everything about Sean Parker’s first-in-human cancer trial of CRISPR gene editing technology is monumental, including ethical concerns about the safety of the first patients who will serve as true pioneers to test the potentially breakthrough cancer immunotherapy.
