President Obama announced a $215 million investment by the US government in what could eventually be a decade-long, billion-dollar initiative involving a million volunteers to develop “precision medicines” tailored to a specific person’s genetics and the characteristics of their tumor. Developing drugs targeted to the genetics of an individual as opposed to just treating every cancer patient with chemotherapy is as unsubtle a change in the practice of medicine as the introduction of anesthesia in the 19th century.
