Year: 2017
Type: editorial
Abstract: With this issue, volume 30 of PCMR is completed, and with it the term of the current editorial leadership. It was a great joy for us as editors to put together an interesting journal and we are pleased to note an uptick of its visibility as marked by an increasing impact factor. But now we feel it is time for us to step down and hand the journal over to a new editorial leadership. We wish the next editor-in-chief and the new team all the best and great success for years to come. It would seem quite obvious at this juncture to look back at what the pigment cell community and PCMR in particular have accomplished in recent years. For now, however, I resist this temptation and rather choose to speculate on what the future might hold for science and for medicine in particular1 As we all know, medicine, at least as currently practiced in most places, usually lags behind the development of a disease. For example, a patient comes to the doctor with a tumor that perhaps has already spread through the body. A therapy is initiated, which first shows impressive results that reassure the patient, relatives, and friends. Soon, however, resistance to the therapy develops, necessitating different approaches, then severe side effects appear that force further therapeutic adaptations, and despite heroic efforts, the outcome is ultimately dismal. But now imagine a bright future, in which medicine will operate quite differently. Imagine new technologies that will eventually allow, for each patient individually, the accumulation of vast amounts of data that can be used to simulate the development of the disease, predict its likely outcome, and prompt pre-emptive strikes. You may think of this in the way large amounts of measurements of atmospheric conditions and ever more sophisticated computer programs are nowadays used to predict the weather with increasing accuracy. No doubt, the recent progress in information technology and in methods to accumulate large data sets from tiny samples of solid tissues or body fluids combined with increasing knowledge in genetics, molecular biology, and drug design (areas to which you as authors and readers of these pages have contributed in no small way) will give the future doctor the power to predict a person's medical trajectory with great precision. In fact, the future doctor, or one day perhaps its robotic equivalent, will ask the patient to put a finger into a nanodrop machine that painlessly collects a bit of blood and subjects it to analysis of thousands of parameters. No longer any need for quaint handwritten charts! The data will be stored remotely, along with an individual's full genomic sequence, and advanced algorithms will be applied to compare the data with those of millions if not billions of other people. It is this comparison that will allow for medicine to jump ahead, model precise scenarios, select the most probable ones among them, and provide a personalized, highly tailored strategy of interference before a catastrophe occurs. Melanoma? Nipped in the bud. Metastases (which may have grown because the patient neglected to go for a checkup)? Eliminated, or, if not quite eliminated, so at least transformed into a chronic and much more benign condition, as we have seen with HIV infections, which erstwhile were a sure killer. Hypo- and hyper-pigmentations? Totally predictable, and the computer program will even calculate precisely how much sun or nasty chemicals your skin will tolerate without adverse effects. It is indeed a brave new world that lies ahead and that, though not abolishing death, promises a life mostly free of suffering up to its very end. But, you may ask, will we, as individuals, be ready to allow our bodily data to be stored forever somewhere in the cloud? Our data, which reflect everything that we carry with us intrinsically (such as gene sequences and the specifics of our metabolism) and that acts upon us extrinsically (all environmental influences)? Given that science is relentlessly progressing, perhaps one day this digital avatar may even reflect the deepest recesses of our personalities, our moods, and desires. Will you consent to knowing about these data or will you prefer to remain blissfully ignorant about your own future? Who, you may also rightly ask, is the owner of these data? Will you be able to maintain control over them or are they there for everyone to grab? Is it even ethical to collect these data? These are legitimate questions that need to be solved, the sooner the better, because the data will likely accumulate regardless of whether we object or not. Nevertheless, eventually, I guess, mankind will embrace this modern world and recognize that our digital second self will ultimately liberate us from fear of disease and quarreling with our destiny, which to this date are the mainstay of the human condition. A brave new world, indeed, or, as the poet e.e. cummings famously put it: “Progress is a comfortable disease.” With this, I wish the journal and you as readers much success for the near and the distant future.
Source: Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research
DOI: 10.1111/pcmr.12654
Author: Heinz Arnheiter
Language: English
Subfield: Reproductive Medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4244003406