Speaker: James Tabery, Ph.D.,Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah

Abstract: Ever since the end of the Human Genome Project in 2003, geneticists have been forecasting a genomic revolution in healthcare. Initially, this revolution was packaged as "personalized medicine"--the idea being that getting DNA from patients will allow for individualizing treatments. Eventually, though, geneticists became concerned that the language of "personalized medicine" misled the public about how medical genetics actually works, and so an effort was made to rebrand the revolution as "precision medicine." I'll tell the story of how this scientific marketing fiasco unfolded, explaining how it managed to only compound the confusion surrounding what genetics does and doesn't bring to medicine.