Cancer
A more precise approach to fighting cancer
Precision medicine offers a personalized approach for prevention and treatment of cancer and other diseases.
Image: © Pogotskiy/Thinkstock
If you have a stomachache or cold, you go to the pharmacy and grab the same remedy that everyone else uses, and it often works. But is that always the best approach? Your reaction to an infection may be quite different from someone else's, so perhaps you need a treatment designed just for you and your ailment.
That's the philosophy behind precision medicine (sometimes referred to as personalized medicine), an emerging approach to prevention and treatment that takes into account a person's genes, environment, and lifestyle and eliminates the one-size-fits-all approach to health care.
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