| Let's face it: Modern medicine relies on a considerable amount of educated guesswork. I'm not criticizing healthcare professionals, medical researchers, or the makers of drugs and medical devices. They do admirable - and often heroic - work. Advances in medicine have been reducing the death rate from cancer by several percentage points a year for decades. Deaths from cardiovascular disease have declined dramatically over the past century. And infectious diseases killed 19% fewer Americans in 2014 than they did in 1980. Treatments for a wide variety of diseases and ailments continue to improve dramatically and rapidly. Oxford Club Chief Investment Strategist Alexander Green likes to point out that Moderna (Nasdaq: MRNA) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) had COVID-19 vaccines ready for clinical trials within a couple of months of the pandemic reaching the U.S. The fastest vaccine development prior to this, for mumps in 1967, took four years. But we're all familiar with the experience of going to the doctor or the hospital and being told that a treatment that works for most people will probably work for us. And the process of determining the effectiveness of a treatment or drug for an individual often involves trial and error. That's because there is significant genetic diversity both across and within population groups. Our genetic differences impact our vulnerability to various diseases and affect how well we respond to specific treatments. We've long known that certain populations are more susceptible to particular diseases. For example, sickle cell anemia disproportionately affects people of African descent, and Tay-Sachs disease disproportionately affects people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. But genetic differences between one population group and the next are modest. The vast majority of human genetic diversity is at the individual level, not between ethnic, geographical and racial groups. And that's been a major obstacle for modern medicine. | 
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