The Battelle Report was released on Wednesday, June 12th, and our family was thankful to be at the Capital to hear it in person. Our government’s initial investment of $3.8 billion into the Human Genome Project has driven $796 billion in economic impact from 1988 to 2003. A profound impact on our economic growth! United for Medical Research also reported the total economic impact of genetics and genomics in the United States has reached nearly a trillion dollars since the initial investments to present day. Read more at this link: Battelle Report
This report illustrates the huge need for continued investment in medical and scientific research. Personalized medicine has to become a reality for everyone in our country today. We can’t afford to not invest in the technology to make this a reality. The initial investments have paid off in ways no one could have expected. It is too costly to continue down the old ways of medicine, going through a checklist of tests that financially costly as well as physically and emotionally costly, only to find no answers or assumptions of diagnosis. We need to move, full force, into the age of personalized medicine, genetic sequencing, and genetic counseling.