European Americans are ten to forty times more likely than African Americans to get a very aggressive type of skin cancer called Melanoma. People of Asian descent are more likely to have the inability to process alcohol efficiently – exposing them to more toxicity. People of Northern European descent have a predisposition for Type 1 diabetes. High blood pressure is twice as common in African Americans than in the rest of the American population. Native Americans have higher rates of tuberculosis, pneumonia, and influenza. I’ll stop there; the list is rather large.

I mention the above statistics to bring the point home for the need for more targeted or “personalized” drugs within the Pharma industry. A “one size fit all” approach for every disease/disorder simply does not aim for maximum effectiveness. Clearly the above example and more importantly common sense points to the fact that every human being is not like every other human being when it comes to appropriate medical treatment and disease prevention. Individuals have different germlines based on many factors within the evolutionary track of a specific population. Read the rest of this entry »