Life Script

Nicholas Wade, a leading science journalist, writes about how the sequencing of the genome is already changing medical care.

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With the recent biomedical discovery on the human genome, what lies in store for new medicine? In LIFE SCRIPT, Nicholas Wade claims that medicine is still in its dark age. We think of our medicine as sophisticated but a few decades from now much of it may be regarded with the same horror as we view the barber-surgeons of the 18th century. But with the human genome now in hand, we can begin to lay the foundation for understanding the body. Decoding genomic information is leading to a revolution -- the genome and new cell biology will create the basis for a new medicine. Consider a new way of healing the body: instead of cutting the flesh with scalpels, poisoning it with chemical drugs or burning it with radiation, the physician would gently treat the body with nothing but cells and proteins, seeking to mend like with like; instead of depending only on his own knowledge, the physician would seek to tap the information in the genome, and to exploit the fact that the body's cells are designed to be a self-assembling system, when given the right signals.
LIFE SCRIPT will explore how we will be affected, from the benefits of cancer treatments and immunisation to the grey moral areas of genetic engineering and longevity. Possession of the genome, states Wade, is a loss of innocence, in that it puts an unprecedented kind of power into our hands; sooner or later we will have to choose whether to use it, and to what end.