Chapter One

THEODORE FRIEDMANN Center for Molecular Genetics, School of Medicine, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California

Unlike Athena, who emerged from the brow of Zeus fully armed and ready for her godly duties, advances in biomedicine are not born fully formed and mature. Virtually all of the therapies and preventive methods that we take for granted-cancer chemotherapy, immunization techniques, tissue transplantation, management of cardiovascular disease, and treatment of diabetes and many other metabolic and degenerative diseases-have required decades of development and incremental advance from initial concept and early proof of concept to truly effective and widely applicable clinical application. They are all still imperfect but are evolving rapidly, and their practitioners are learning from false starts, detours, reversals, and missteps. In most cases, scientists, the public, policymakers, and the media understand and accept what is often a discouragingly slow pace of advance in a difficult new ... read full excerpt from Concepts in Genetic Medicine ebook