EXCERPT

In this Viewpoint, John Ioannidis and colleagues review how rarely gene therapy and genomic medicine have led to breakthroughs for patients and call on the NIH to defund preclinical research that fails to deliver on its initial promise.

For several decades now the biomedical research community has pursued a narrative positing that a combination of ever-deeper knowledge of subcellular biology, especially genetics, coupled with information technology will lead to transformative improvements in health care and human health. In this Viewpoint, we provide evidence for the extraordinary dominance of this narrative in biomedical funding and journal publications; discuss several prominent themes embedded in the narrative to show that this approach has largely failed; and propose a wholesale reevaluation of the way forward in biomedical research.