| Summary: | It is well known that the efficacy of certain drugs varies from individual to individual, depending in part on variation in the genes that encode drug metabolizing enzymes or target proteins. Like many other branches of the biomedical sciences, pharmacogenetics has been invigorated by recent advances in genomics, which has led to expectations that the safety and efficacy of medicines will soon be notably improved by personalization of therapeutics based on genetic data. Here we discuss how the crisis of the molecular gene concept affects the premise traced by pharmacogenetics and how the sprouting of new paradigms in molecular and developmental biology points out the impossibility of reducing biological complexity to a DNA strand and single nucleotide polymorphism, affecting the main aim of pharmacotherapy which is to provide the right drug for the right patient at the right dose.
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