Personalized Medicine, Genomics and Enhancement: Monuments to Neoliberalism

This essay explores the meanings, possibilities, limitations, and some of the relationships between three currently much discussed – and debated – topics: personalized medicine, genomics, and enhancement. We believe, and gather in one place some of the literature supporting the view that all three are largely the product of the current dominant ideology of neoliberalism with its emphasis on individual freedom of choice, unwavering trust in the “wisdom of the market,” the commodification of everything, including information and promise, and the associated scientific viewpoints it employs, reductionism and biological (especially genetic) determinism. We recognize that the success (or failure) of approaches to problems based on reductionism and/or genetic influences depends upon the problem(s) considered and the uses to which the accumulating insight will be employed. We believe that we can often do better than focusing on profit motives when determining which problems to study and which outcomes are most useful.