SCI/TECH: Eli Lilly Disses Blockbusters, Plugs Personalized Medicine: Medicaid Chokes

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The latest champion for personalized medicine is Dr. Mary V. Relling of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Dr. Relling travels the country advocating the use of pharmacogenetics, a branch of personalized medicine.

...pharmacogenetics, (is) a clinical discipline in which doctors use high-tech genetic testing to custom-make drugs to patients’ individual needs. ...At St. Jude, patients with leukemia are now routinely given genetic tests to determine their individual response to a medication. “We’ve seen it save lives here,” she said. “That’s made me a believer.”

...When hundreds of patients are given a drug, ...“some will get no benefit, others will have terrible side effects, and still others will get benefits with tolerable side effects.” ...Gene variants may be the cause. ...Till now, there’s been a one-size-fits-all approach (to drugs). In most cases, an average dose of a medication is ordered, and then, if the patient suffers side effects, the dosage is adjusted. With gene testing, we can customize the prescription.

At the moment, there seems to be a lot of promise for pharmacogenetics in the treatment of arthritis, heart disease, colon cancer and even psychiatric diseases like depression and schizophrenia. ...on the clinical level, you can save money. ...testing costs are minor compared to the savings gained by avoiding drug reactions, blood transfusions and additional hospitalizations.

Saving Lives With Tailor-Made Medication

Why Do Prescription and OTC Drugs Make People Sicker?

The pharmaceutical industry has been focusing on proteins - and one-size-fits-all blockbusters - since Linus Pauling discovered the actin protein's "a" and "b" conformations in 1950. Proteinology was the hot science career long before molecular biology became profitable.

In general, blockbuster drugs target specific proteins and enzymes. But everyone is different, and so are their proteins. As a result, blockbuster drugs often target the wrong proteins - or the right proteins in the wrong way - in different individuals, and create new protein-related disorders (euphemistically called "side effects").

So drug "side effects" are best understood as being secondary chronic diseases resulting from synthetically created protein disorders. Even worse, synthetically created protein disorders can become infectious.

Pharmacogenetics is one solution to the problem. In fact, the technology for tailoring medications and treatments to individual patients has existed since the 1980's.

But. Corporate industry decided: a) It is more profitable to use the new technology to create Genetically Modified products; and b) There is more money to be made by continuing to use old technology to treat the new synthetically-created chronic diseases. This strategy constantly creates new protein-related diseases and disorders, and thus ensures a captive, expanding market for even more blockbuster drugs.

Responsible scientists and doctors have been trying to educate the public about this situation over the past several decades. All have come under attack. Some, like Linus Pauling and Stanley Prusiner, were vindicated with Nobel Prizes in science. Others were not so lucky.

Like other champions who came before her, Dr. Relling is putting her life on the line, if not her reputation.


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