THE ETHICS OF PERSONALISED MEDICINE: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION (#18)
There has been enormous enthusiasm for personalised medicine, but only a few personalised medicines have found their way into routine clinical practice. One part of the explanation for this may be that personalised medicine challenges some of the moral, socio-political and epistemic (knowledge-related) values we hold dear. In this presentation, I will provide a brief introduction to ethics, and illustrate some the ethical dilemmas raised by personalised medicine using three case studies: 1) the ethics of allowing “crossover” in clinical trials of personalised medicines; 2) the ethics of funding expensive personalised medicines that are not obviously “cost effective” and 3) the ethics of returning “incidental findings” that arise in the course of practicing personalised medicine.
LOWY 2015*