Die durch ökonomische Maßstäbe geprägte Versorgung deprofessionalisiert Ärzte: Sie werden zu Ingenieuren deformiert, warnt der Medizinethiker Giovanni Maio. Die Treue zum Patientenwohl müssten Ärzte sich selbst neu erkämpfen.

Clinical trials are a good way of identifying drugs that, on the whole, are effective at achieving a specific outcome. But “on the whole” doesn’t take into account the wide variation among humans that means patients may react very differently to the drugs they’re given. The promise of personalised medicine is that through a more accurate understanding of a patient’s genetic makeup, alongside factors such as their lifestyle, diet and environment, they can be prescribed different drugs depending on what we know about how those drugs will affect them personally, rather than “on the whole”.