Don't let the awkward title of this book put you off. This is a book about an important set of issues that goes beyond the keywords flagged in the title to address the contradictions of biomedical meanings of race and population, as well as concerns over the clinical efficacy of genetic testing. It is among the very first books to look at the intersection of these issues using primarily Asian case studies and expert interviews, many of them carried out in Singapore, where the author is based. Sun's starting point is the "palpable tension" (2) between the proliferation of claims made for the potential value of personalized medicine (usually taken to mean bespoke medical treatment designed for an individual genetic map) and large-scale studies that are based on identifying medically significant genetic variations across populations defined by ethnic and racial categories (e.g., one of every thirteen African American babies is born with sickle cell trait). From the standpoint of drug companies, this moment marks a turning away from the search for blockbuster drugs, such as penicillin, that can treat everyone suffering from the same illness to what might be called a narrow-cast approach that seeks to produce medicines targeted at affected populations defined around common genetic traits.
