DL_Where will be the future medical research? 6/9
DSM crisis is not only due to its epistemic foundations. There are other voices than their DSM voices in the scientific and technological fields that invite break new ground in medical research. The NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) is critical to the appearance of DSM5. He sees little difference with the previous version and confirms that its strength is in the "inter-rater reliability" and its weakness in its "scientific validity".
The DSM is not measured actually more than himself. And the NIMH then proposed a way based on scientific evidence, evidence seeking objective signs through neuroimaging, genetic markers and neural circuits in the triple record cognition, emotion and behaviour.
All these investigations have called RDoc (Research Domain Criteria). DSM categories for NIMH should be replaced by these new since the reunification of clinical symptoms in categories have no scientific validity to remain on the surface. So far the first model that seeks its RDoc project an impact on society joining the call of the "Brain Iniative" of the Obama administration that aims to integrate the results of genetics and neuroscience to cure diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.
The second model led by Google is the private counterpart. It is also to link the genetic advances immediately exploitable therapeutic results. The company 23andMe founded by an American biologist, Anne Wojcicki, wife of one of the founders of Google. Through a simple diagnostic kit the client sends a saliva sample to a laboratory that will decipher DNA. An idea that is implemented in 2006 and today, with 820,000 customers, of which 600,000 have agreed to provide data for research, have probably generated for the company's largest database for medical studies. This, in fact, beyond diagnosis kit is its real business: selling data to pharmaceutical companies.
Possibly by 2013, the company had not yet implemented the sale. Anyway, the same year the company suffered two hard blows: marriage -Brin / Wojcicki- is separated and the US Food and Drug Administration prohibits the marketing kit for providing inaccurate information. In the same 2013, Google announced a new project: Calico, company that was founded to explore innovative technological ways to prolong life. The model, despite these setbacks, takes hold.
Two models are compared in what will be the future medicine. Both are based on the manipulation of large databases, but while the first one is governed by case statistics that enable good practice to regulate the second aspires to a global and individualized medicine. And it is not then the difficulties of the Obama administration with the creation of a system that embraces health insurance but that the initiative of individualized medicine come into direct conflict with the limits of health bureaucracies.