Ethical and Communicative Significance of "Personalised Medicine"

The first aim of the paper is to analyse in a culture-theoretical perspective those characteristic semantic markers that permit personalized medicine (PM) to figure as a prestigious seminal trend of future medicine. In fact, there is evidence that the ambiguity of the favourite semantic markers of PM engenders a conception of PM that is analogous to the tailoring of services to customers. There is an air of paradox: while patients are supposed to be the key beneficiaries of PM, their genuine preferences, at present, are seriously underarticulated. The second aim of the paper is to focus attention on some highlights within the multifarious ethical discourse that accompanies the development of PM. As a result, valuable methodological options are outlined that support a consistently ethical analysis of ethical value-conflicts pertaining to the rise of PM.