Pharmaceutical Research: For What, for Whom? Science and Social Policies

To deny that advances in health delivery and research, including therapeutic medicines during the past sixty years, have not been of significant benefit to mankind is to deny reality. Equally, few will be prepared to deny that the future will be one of at least equal promise. Children will be born with their genes profiled, personalized medicines will be a reality, gene and stem cell therapies will be mature disciplines with major implications for the degenerative disorders of an aging world. This new world will be one of artificial cells and machines, many specifically created de novo with an expanded genetic code and that will execute unique tasks ranging from the site- and disease-specific delivery of drugs, genes, and gene repair instructions to neuronal- and DNA-based computers. These advances will have been made possible by a remarkable several generations of scientific research, culminating in the reading of multiple genomes, including the human genome.