Progress in two major areas over the past 10 years has contributed to the understanding of pediatric disease and its pharmacologic management, writes Leeder and Kearns (pages 141–143). The first is a series of legislative changes targeted to improve drug therapy in children. In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration Pediatric Rule provided an avenue for manufacturers to insert information on the pharmacology and use of drugs in pediatric patients into approved product labeling. The second is the Human Genome Project, initiated in 1990 with the goal of sequencing the entire complement of human genes by the year 2005 which is expected to impact the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric diseases.
The sheer magnitude of information resulting from pharmacogenomic analyses may yield a qualitative, disruptive change when compared to previous attempts to match drugs to genotypic variations. Yet even before its optimistic expectations materialize, LT Vaszar et al (pages 144–147) suggest that pharmacogenomics is poised to challenge our current understanding of privacy. These studies will create large databases of genomic profiles. Stored DNA samples or digitized sequence information will contain the individual's probabilistic ‘future diary’, and as such are more vulnerable to violations of privacy.
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