What if there were some way to identify gene mutations causing the cell to behave as a cancer and then, with a medication, undo the effects of the errant gene? This is the basis of personalized medicine.
PUBLISHED July 11, 2018
Rick Boulay, M.D., is a board-certified gynecologic oncologist. When cancer faced his family and his medical training left him ill-prepared to manage the day-to-day needs of cancer treatment and survivorship, he found wisdom, support and love in the patients he treated. As a result, Dr. Boulay, who is also a singer, now writes and performs on topics at the intersection of cancer and society.
Personalized medicine (also termed “precision medicine”) is the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics of each patient.Traditionally, cancer treatment progressed along the predictable pathways of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, prompting my more emboldened patients to quip, “If you can’t cut it out, then burn it out. If neither of those work, then poison it.”
Although the oncologist in me gasps at these language choices, the humanist in me concedes its wisdom. After all, my five-hour commitment to either a surgical procedure or chemotherapy administration generally requires several weeks of medical care to manage the damage I’ve created. That is to say, in an effort to stomp each and every cancerous cell, my interventions initially leave folks worse off than when we first met. My tools are indiscriminant. They not only kill and injure cancer cells, but they harm the good ones too. It’s kind of a scorched earth policy. And to quote Dr. Susan Love, “Cancer treatment leaves collateral damage.” But cancer is cancer. And we need to be aggressive with an aggressive disease. Everybody wants to fight it.
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