The U. S. health care system encourages patients to take more responsibility for their own treatment decisions and expects their doctors to cooperate in that effort. But the guidelines for exercising that responsibility remain very murky indeed.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
With the U.S. Supreme Court likely to decide on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, it is instructive to understand the relevant policy positions of the largest physician organization in the country.