Genes vs environment

Not an easy topic, but here is an interesting recent guest column by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, in the New York Times discussing the complex interactions between genes and the environment. Although they discuss this from a largely neuropsychiatric perspective the lessons are widely applicable to therapeutics. We have far too many champions of the genetic approach who push ideas that genetic variability underlie everything that determines drug efficacy and toxicity. The underfunded environmental approaches go largely ignored because they use rather unexciting mundane technology, and produce results that tend not to generate patents.

IMO the gene only approach is clearly not valid. The challenge is how to tease out the various gene-environment interactions and to define them clearly so that they can eventually help us optimize our therapeutic regiments.