Ethics, Evidence and Economics in the Pursuit of “Personalized Medicine”

Despite enthusiastic advocacy for what personalized medicine might be able to deliver and major investments into the development of this, there remain disappointingly few examples of personalized medicine in routine clinical practice today, particularly in high areas of unmet need such as cancer. We believe that this is because personalized medicine challenges the moral, economic and epistemological foundations of medicine. In this article, we briefly describe the scientific premises underpinning personalized medicine, contrast these with traditional paradigms of drug development, and then consider the ethical, economic and epistemological implications of this approach to medicine.