‘Precision Medicine’: Critical Reflections on Europe’s Latest Healthcare Paradigm

Precision medicine is the healthcare model chosen by the European Union to tackle healthcare costs and improve research outcomes. This new paradigm is grounded on the pooling of healthcare data, which comprises human genetic information as well as lifestyle patterns. On a regional level, the Union has prompted a series of initiatives aiming at the mutualisation of healthcare information, with the collaboration of dedicated national bodies. The International Consortium for Personalized Medicine (ICPerMed), the “1+Million Genomes Initiative,” for instance, comes along with the facilitation of exchange of healthcare data amongst European and international medical consortia. The current craze surrounding precision medicine is not without raising legitimate concerns as to the results, methods and aims of this new healthcare policy, which substitutes the circulation of patients to that of their personal medical data across the Union. The creation of such medical data flows posits the question of its authentic rationale. While economic arguments are heralded as an end, one is to ask whether precision medicine does not pave the way for a more prescriptive and controlling regional healthcare policy, tightening its mesh on both societal and personal levels. Several hypotheses are examined in this paper: I first sketch the contours of current scientific knowledge in the field of genetics, and review precision medicine as a healthcare model. I then explore the whys and wherefores of the research benefit token which is held as a core argument to support the collection of healthcare data. Furthermore, such argument is not foreign to a technocratic worldview, whereby policies are led by experts. I finally test whether this initiative bears the potential of a biopower.