Pharmacogenetics: Its Place in Medicine and Biology

A young science serves its purpose if it leads not only to new knowledge, but to new insights and concepts. This article opens with examples to illustrate some former thinking that the introduction of pharmacoge-netic has overcome. Pharmacogenetic case histories from discovery to the present illustrate the interlock-ing of observations, technical advances, and changing concepts. There are striking biological similarities be-tween pharmacogenetics and those inborn factors that cause resistance to infectious disease: Both repre-sent person-to-person variations that may help the survival of populations, one when facing massive toxic exposures, the other when facing plagues and epidem-ics. Thus pharmacogenetics represents a biologically necessary variability of the defenses against chemica