Personalized healthcare—or what this book calls “Me Medicine”—is radically transforming the US’s longstanding “one-size-fits-all” model. Technologies such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing, pharmacogenetically developed therapies in cancer care, private umbilical cord blood banking, and neurocognitive enhancement claim to cater to an individual’s specific biological character, and, in some cases, these technologies have shown powerful potential. Yet in others they have produced negligible or even negative results. Whatever is behind the rise of Me Medicine, it is not just science. So why i ... More

Personalized healthcare—or what this book calls “Me Medicine”—is radically transforming the US’s longstanding “one-size-fits-all” model. Technologies such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing, pharmacogenetically developed therapies in cancer care, private umbilical cord blood banking, and neurocognitive enhancement claim to cater to an individual’s specific biological character, and, in some cases, these technologies have shown powerful potential. Yet in others they have produced negligible or even negative results. Whatever is behind the rise of Me Medicine, it is not just science. So why is Me Medicine rapidly edging out We Medicine, and how has the commitment in the US to the collective health suffered as a result? This analysis examines the economic and political factors fueling the Me Medicine phenomenon and explores how, over time, this paradigm shift in how Americans approach health might damage our individual and collective well-being. Historically, the measures of “We Medicine,” such as vaccination and investment in public-health infrastructure, have radically extended our life spans, and Dickenson argues we have lost sight of that truth in our enthusiasm for “Me Medicine.” The book explores how personalized medicine illustrates capitalism’s protean capacity for creating new products and markets where none existed before-and how this, rather than scientific plausibility, goes a long way toward explaining private umbilical cord blood banks and retail genetics.