Bill Harvey: Medical developments of gothic proportions

In last week’s issue we ran the first in a two part series looking at personalised medicine. The focus upon the identification of gene sequences and the ‘junk’ in between, linking them to the expression of diseases, the development of stem cell intervention techniques and the increased access for clinicians to DNA testing, both ‘in house’ and at local laboratory centres, can only improve the role of the primary care clinician in the future. It is also worth noting that early successes in the evolution of these techniques have included ophthalmic diseases such as Stargardt’s and retinitis pigmentosa.

The UK is well-placed to play a major role here, despite recent apparent isolationist leanings, and the opening of the Francis Crick Institute in the coming weeks (in the area being developed around Kings Cross where the new Moorfields site is to be opened) builds on early advances when other countries, notably George W Bush’s US, were slow to adopt some areas of genetic and stem cell research on ‘moral’ grounds.