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The brief history of pharmacogenetics has been marked by a high level of public as well as professional interest, reflecting in many respects the great promise offered by genomic approaches to biology, clinical medicine, and pharmacology over the past ∼15 years. This early interest in personalized medicine was fueled by reviews [1, 2] in which it was predicted that drug prescribing could be undertaken with greater certainty and objectivity after elucidation of genetic traits determining variable drug disposition between individuals. The noted geneticist Allen Roses raised the ghost of Sir William Osler in his contemplation of the quote “If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science and not an art” (p.857) [2]. Roses' response, made just over one hundred years later (in 2000), hinted that the end was in sight for the art of medicine, offering that “...we are on the verge of being able to identify inherited differences between individuals which can predict each patient's response to a medicine. This ability will have far-reaching benefits in the discovery, development and delivery of medicines” (p. 857) [2].

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