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UnDisciplined: Is personalized medicine a threat to public health?

A pharmacist pulls a bottle of medicine off a shelf.
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Personalized medicine sounds like a good idea. Our genes are all quite different, after all, so why should our medical treatment be the same? But what sounds like a good idea in theory might not be working in practice.

James Tabery is a professor at the University of Utah, where he studies the history and philosophy of science, as well as bioethics. His new book is called "Tyranny of the Gene."

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Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.