Although my patients have very diverse backgrounds (ie, in class, age, ethnicity, race, education, language, health literacy), they are quite similar in what they fear and what they don’t fear. For my female patients, breast cancer is at the top of the list. Somewhere beneath that is diabetes, then heart disease, stroke, and others that you would expect. I’m pretty sure that for most of my patients, lung cancer doesn’t even make it on the list.

Most would agree that mapping of the human genome during the last few years of the 20^th century was a key technological advance in a century that saw the most technological advances in history. Knowledge of the human genome makes pharmacogenomics possible, and pharmacogenomics makes personalized medicines possible. Personalized medicine—hype not withstanding—is a model for pharmacotherapeutics that cannot be ignored by those interested in advancements in the treatment of disease. It most often refers to use of an individual’s genetic information to optimize treatment or prevent disease for that individual. Crizotinib (Xalkori) and vemurafenib (Zelboraf) are notable personalized medicines approved by the FDA in 2011.