Less Medicine, More Health by H. Gilbert Welch

Author:H. Gilbert Welch [Welch, H. Gilbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-8070-7165-6
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)
Published: 2015-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

Send me a drop of your blood every month. That’s the vision of the CEO of HealthTell, one of the start-ups focusing on molecular diagnosis—measuring the activity of your own immune system (the so-called immunosignature)—to test for various diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, HIV, and cancer. It’s a vision in which the well could be continually monitored for an expanding number of diseases.

Is this snake oil? It’s certainly a reasonable question to ask. No one knows how well immunosignatures predict disease. In fact, the worst diseases may well be those that don’t produce any immune response—that have no immunosignature.

And the question of what people who otherwise feel well should do if their immunosignature is deemed to be “concerning” remains totally unanswered. At least they can worry.

I don’t want to stifle innovation, but wouldn’t it be nice if this kind of energy and vision was directed to those who had problems, instead of to finding (and creating) new problems for those who do not?

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