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OK, I'm Ron Zimmern.
I'm a public health physician.
And I've been involved in genetics and health policy
for over 15 years.
We have, for the first time in the history of medicine,
got the ability not just to study
the environmental factors, like smoking or nutrition,
but also the genetic factors.
And so we can dissect out exactly, for an individual,
rather than for a whole population,
what is most important.
I think, we're at the start of a 25, 50, 75-year journey.
We're not talking about a revolution that
will happen in the next five years or so.
It's a revolution.
It's an evolution rather, that has already started.
We are seeing drugs for cancer, for example,
that work on very specific genetic variations, that
are already revolutionising the lives of people
with colorectal cancer, with melanoma, with lung cancer.
But that is just the very tip of an iceberg.
With time, I think individuals will
be able to understand their personal risk of disease.
They will be able to go in for screening programmes,
which will tell them what they are liable to i suffer from.
And as a consequence, I think, the actions
that they can take-- what might be called general health
promotion-- can be much more tailored to individuals.
Most importantly, we have to ensure
that we have got a workforce-- that is, doctors and nurses
and all the other people who work in the NHS-- who
understand what this genetic revolution can do for health
and what their role might be in it.
This is not an inconsiderable task.
It will take a long time to get everybody up to speed.
But the citizen must also play his or her role.
Because he or she will, in the future,
be much more responsible for health than they have hitherto.