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Opinion: Barriers to genomic testing get in the way of precision medicine

In this era of precision medicine, oncologists should be able to quickly check their patients' genomes. I was surprised to learn that many can't.
A lab officer cuts a DNA fragment under UV light from an agarose gel for DNA sequencing as part of research to determine genetic mutation in a blood cancer patient on April 19, 2007 in Singapore.

As precision medicine opens up promising new advances in cancer care, I often think back to my early days as an oncologist, the patients I treated, and the limited treatment options I had for them.

I especially remember Pam (not her real name). She was in her early 30s, recently married, vibrant, and looking forward to a life filled with joy and children. Pam had acute myeloid leukemia, a disease oncologists had struggled to treat for decades. Her leukemia was relentless: Chemotherapy did little to stop it, and it persisted even

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