Sydney Symposium August 2017
Background
The promise of data-driven therapeutic development has become irresistible for health policy-makers and pharmaceutical companies in recent years. Precision Medicine, situated at the intersection of overlapping fields – such as genomics, nanomedicine, public health and bioinformatics – has emerged as the site of biomedical ‘hope and hype’ for this promise. It presents a new path “for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in environment, lifestyle and genes for each person.” This addition of hitherto ‘external’ factors to genetic data represents a stepwise shift from personalized medicine focused on pharmacogenomics to a broader project of both aggregating diverse data sources and empowering patients.
Jurisdictions are grappling with the new interactions between biomedical research, digital devices, and expectations of health and illness implied by this shift. For example, NSW has established an Office for Health and Medical Research which financially supports genomic and proteomics research while also attempting to embed these technologies into the health system. How will research agendas on the ethical, social and legal implications of precision medicine and broader public dialogue mediate between social expectations and research?
Recordings can be downloaded here
Presentation slides can be downloaded here
Session 1: Imaginaries and Boundaries
Alan Petersen: Beyond ‘precision medicine’: towards a more democratic healthcare
Daniel Robinson: Access to and regulation of genetic resources in an era of rapid commodification: Pharma, biodiscovery and medicine post-Nagoya Protocol’
Eben Kirksey: CRISPR Trans-Migrations: Gene Editing and Consumer Choices
Session 2: (Un)Common Care, Culture and Choice
Pam Joseph: Choice and control: listening to parents of children with high-level care needs.
Katharine McKinnon: Negotiating Maternities: Choice and Care in Childbirth
Session 3: Health Justice, Biomedicine and Biobanking
Lisa Dive, Wendy Lipworth, Ian Kerridge & Edwina Light: Biobank networks, medical research and the challenge of globalisation
Emma Kowal: Biobanking and Indigenous Governance
Declan Kuch: Midata.coop and Alternative Economies of Precision Medicine
Session 4: Organising Precision
Nic Rasmussen: Individualising the Risks of Fatness: Precision Adipometry vs a 1950s Public Health Campaign against Obesity"
John Gardner: Imaginaries of health and wealth: Accelerating innovation of advanced medicines in the UK
Georgia Miller: Biomedical futures in the making: Health and medical research policy as industry policy