Personalised medicines 20 years off

How to detect BS

Chained to your desk

NPD

Personalised medicines 20 years off

Widespread use of medicines customised to the patient’s genetic make-up is 15 to 20 years away, says a report by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science.

In Personalised medicines: hopes and realities, the Society says personalised medicines have a bright future. But “there are many gaps in our understanding of how genetics relates to the causes of disease,” it says.

Sir David Weatherall, chair of the working group, said “Personalised medicines show promise but they have undoubtedly been over-hyped. The complex multiple causes of diseases mean it will be at least 15 to 20 years before a patient’s genetic make-up is a major factor in determining which drugs they are prescribed.”

The report calls for more state and private sector money to explore the potential of pharmacogenetics, but warns that a dearth of suitably skilled researchers may hold up quick progress.

Given these findings, it seems that similar research in the food and beverage sector may take as long to produce positive results. Certainly, the new standards of proof is likely to put food on a par with medicines with respect to therapeutic claims. For a copy of the report go to www.royalsoc.ac.uk/personalisedmedicines

Research politics

How to detect BS

Finnish researcher Gunnar Njalsson may have let several cats out of the bag with his new book, but they are likely to be well-insulated against exposure. He says they have channelled billions in tax dollars into a self-serving techno-economic research elite.

Technological Revolution as Political coup d'etat- Developing an Objective and Systematic Science of Public Technology Policy Analysis, to give it its full title, critiques current policy in Europe, Latin America and Australasia as it analyses the diffuse and inflated rhetoric used by the interest groups that form public technology policy.

Njalsson reckons two powerful elite groups influence the nature of national technology policy. These are the econocrats and technocrats. Each sees research topics in its own light, he says.

For instance, econocrats with industrial interests tend to view many current and future problems in terms of economics-related issues, to be solved by those tools provided by economics as a discipline. Technocrats tend to propose technologies as a solution, even to political problems such as the functioning of democracy.

But in the 1980s and 1990s they made common cause. Econocrats realised they could deal with various stability and profit-related issues through automation, information and control. Technocrats found they could ensure jobs, prestige and wealth for themselves by cooperating. Both managed to re-define many central societal issues in terms of economics and technology, and through their legitimacy, to channel public resources toward their own hegemonic societal projects, Njalsson says.

In the book he offers a classification of current technology development theories, and points out the need for a more objective and systematic classification of public technology policies. He also offers a way to cut through much of the hype associated with technology programme proposals. In a second book he hopes to give policy-makers further evidence, insights and tools for spending our tax money more effectively.

"Enough is at stake in terms of billions of dollars, millions of jobs and the entire shape of our future to warrant policy makers taking an interest and training themselves to take informed and realistic decisions in this field of public policy,” Njalsson warns.

Technological Revolution as Political coup d'etat is due out in late October 2005. More information is available at: http://www.spacepol.com/TechPolicy.pdf.

Consumption

Chained to your desk

Desk-dining is on the up, especially at lunchtime, when it coincides with a peak in on-line activity, says new research at Ball State University, due out shortly. A question for food makers is whether consumers care what they are putting into their mouths while they are on-line.

The research shows that food and beverage consumption have long been associated with mealtimes. But only recently have people started taking lunch while they internet.

Other media meals now rival the video supper, especially the online lunch. The 2005 Middletown Studies will show that online usage peaks around the lunch hour. And fresh figures from Atlas, the research unit of aQuantive, suggest that workers are actually shopping online during their lunch hours. They show 35% more people are buying on-line at noon than the average during the whole day.