ABSTRACT
The term ‘personalised’ or ‘individualised medicine’ is increasingly applied to designate the use of individual genetic and molecular markers for diagnostic, therapeutic and preventive purposes in medicine. Tremendous amounts of financial resources and research capacities are invested to improve risk prevention, diagnostic accuracy and treatment outcomes by developing more individually tailored biological problem solutions in medicine. However, this almost exclusively molecular and biological concept of ‘personalisation’ leads to a strong connotation – if not to a de facto identification – of ‘person’ with the molecular set-up of an individual’s physical body. (For a more holistic discussion on the term ‘person’ see chapters 4 and 5, this volume.)
