FP Report -- July 1999
Special Section
You're family physician Chris Van Winkle. In the summer of 1999,after an extremely busy day at the office, you fall asleep in your backyard hammock. When you wake -- everything's different. It's now 2014, and you've lost all memory of the past 15 years!
You pretend everything is normal and manage to keep your cool -- until you check the appointment book and flip through some patient charts the next morning. What's this -- nose drops to treat lung cancer? an in-utero procedure to eliminate sickle cell anemia? To top it off, tomorrow you're scheduled to counsel a young woman about the possibility of learning her risk for 50 diseases, since she's mature enough to decide whether she wants such information. If she says yes and any test results are positive, you're to help her design an individualized program of preventive medicine.
It becomes clear that almost everything has changed because of advances in human genetics -- everything except your patients' need to have you as their advocate and guide in an increasingly complicated world of medical options.
You fumble your way through the day, then go home to brood. You have to catch up. How can you possibly do it? ...
In reality, you may have it easier -- most likely you'll be awake and aware in the next 15 years. But at times you may wonder how you can keep ahead of the avalanche of genetic tests and therapies that are just now starting to come your way. At a minimum, you'll probably have to refresh your knowledge of basic human genetics. Since all medical conditions except trauma are thought to have a genetic component, there might eventually be tests and treatments for almost everything.
This special section of FP Report on pages 3-5 is designed to give you a taste of what's ahead in the near future, as the world enters the "biotechnology millennium" and family practice changes forever.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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