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Leon Eisenberg, MD

JAMA. 1995;274(4):331-334.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

CAN medicine be reduced to molecular biology? Or, to paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, is the business of US medicine business? Or, could Francis Peabody,¹ chief of medicine at Boston City Hospital in the 1920s, have been right when he insisted that an essential quality of the clinician "is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient"?

The Human Genome Project² has set the goal of cloning all the genes in the 46 human chromosomes. We are told by its proponents that, with a little bit of luck, in 5 or 10 or 20 years (the precise date depending on the bounty of Congress), molecular biologists will have deciphered the human genome. Then, we have been promised, the nature of man will be laid bare before us. Medicine will have become applied molecular genetics. The term evokes images of precision, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

Footnotes
Adapted from the inaugural Stanley D. Simon, MD, Affinity Group Lecture at Brown University School of Medicine, Providence, RI, January 30, 1995.

Reprint requests to Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, 641 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (Dr Eisenberg).

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