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

摘要: Physicians have long puzzled over a well-known phenomenon: different patients respond differently to the same treatment. Although many explanations exist, pharmacogenetics has now captured medical imagination. While this might seem part of broader interest in all things genetic, early history reveals specific factors that contributed emergence genetics within pharmacology. This paper examines work one pioneering pharmacologist, Werner Kalow, trace evolving intellectual formations and, particular, focus on race. Working 1950s and 1960s, Kalow made three arguments demonstrate relevance pharmacology, based laboratory techniques, analogies differences between other animal species, appeals logic natural selection. After contributing field, maintained his advocacy for four decades, collecting more evidence its relevance, navigating controversies about race science, balancing against possible patient variability. Kalow’s demonstrates deep roots genetic racial preoccupations Understanding can restore attention individuality practice, something increasing importance given current personalized medicine.