How Personalized Medicine Became Genetic, and Racial: Werner Kalow and the Formations of Pharmacogenetics

Bernard Lerer: Recipient of the 2014 Inaugural Werner Kalow Responsible Innovation Prize in Global Omics and Personalized Medicine (Pacific Rim Association for Clinical Pharmacogenetics)

“…He began his work in January 1947. ( Jones, 2013) Kalow was not the only one who contributed to the emergence of pharmacogenetics in the 1950s. In a seminal article, Arno G. Motulsky proposed the idea of genetic contribution to adverse drug effects (Motulsky, 1957).…”

“…As Jones aptly observed, ''with the thalidomide scandals in 1961 and the Kefauver hearings from 1959 to 1962, there was great interest in anything that might improve drug safety.'' ( Jones, 2013). This changing political and regulatory climate in the 1960s in part facilitated (though slowly) pharmacologists to reconsider new explanations, including heredity, that might help predict person-to-person variations in drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.…”

“…(Hedgecoe, 2009). While the ''geneticization thesis'' has proved popular among social scientists and bioethicists, empirical data cast doubts on the geneticization thesis of bioethicists as a simple mechanism by which clinical adoption of genetic tests can be explained (Hedgecoe, 2009 mean geneticization, nor should genetic research invariably lead to genetic determinism as a consequence (Ö zdemir et al, 2005;Ö zdemir, 2010;Jones, 2013). Absent in these social science analyses of pharmacogenetics are the works of Kalow in the late 1990s, wherein he presciently noted the rise of yet another field of postgenomics inquiry-pharmacoepigenetics-that firmly opposed geneticization, and underscored the temporal and spatial plasticity of genetic components of drug response.…”

Law, Race, and Biotechnology: Toward a Biopolitical and Transdisciplinary Paradigm

“…Indeed, in several widely cited articles in prominent journals, biomedical researchers argued that it was essential to investigate health-related genetic differences among racial groups in order to attend to the health problems of minority patients effectively and equitably (e.g., Risch et al 2002, Burchard et al 2003. Researchers in the field of pharmacogenomics, studying the genetic origins of disease and differential responses to treatment, are developing pharmaceuticals designed to treat illness in particular racial and ethnic groups (Bloche 2004, Tate & Goldstein 2004, Jones 2013, Kahn 2013.…”

Effect of acetaminophen on sulfamethazine acetylation in male volunteers

“…6 Inactivation of intracellular NATs by exogenous or endogenous chemical agents could impair the key detoxification pathways and result in enhanced cell toxicity and carcinogenesis. 1 Work on NATs has proved that various ethnic populations may have different metabolic potentials towards a specific drug 7 which is an important implication for clinical trials regarding the modern concept of individualized therapy. 8 Sulfamethazine (SMZ) syn.…”