Stem cell tourism and spinal cord injury in South Africa

Abstract

Imagine a world in which disease management is highly personalised. Drug treatments would be specific to the individual concerned, taking into account genetic background and environmental factors. Therapies would be effective, tailored to the individual’s needs, with few or no side-effects. Given that at present many of our treatments are based on a one-size-fits-all approach, which clearly has its limitations, personalised medicine is an important ideal to pursue. The highly publicised notion of precision medicine on the other hand aims to identify differences at a population level, guiding the application recent technological advances.