AMA Journal of Ethics^®

Biological and cultural differences affect the experience of pain, and misinformation and biases affect its treatment.

To stay abreast of advances in genetics and genomics, health care professionals should attain competencies in this area, learn to use point-of-care decision-support tools related to genetic testing and diagnoses, and counteract the spread of misconceptions about the certainty, sensitivity, and cost of genetic test results.

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.

Future innovation in personalized medicine in the United States depends largely upon the regulatory and legal climate and actions taken by the FDA.

Instead of using race as a shorthand for factors that directly influence health, researchers should investigate those factors themselves.

Certificates of confidentiality, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, allow researchers to refuse to disclose identifying information about research participants in any civil, legal, or other government proceeding. This level of protection is said to promote enrollment in research studies.

Genomics holds great promise for enabling clinicians to identify the cause of illness more rapidly and precisely and less expensively than traditional methods, but it may be hampered by the patenting of gene sequences responsible for illness by companies that discover them.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics’ opinion on population-based genomic research.