ADS4: Hero

The public has become infatuated with the illness and death of others. Jade Goody is the best-known example of this phenomenon; however, there have been numerous programmes on television, the Internet and radio which have fed on this fascination. Where will this obsession take us in the near future and how will it interact with a medical system moving toward predictive genetic testing? The medical centre of 2020 will need to accommodate the public interest in medical drama, the media’s desire to make it accessible, and medicine’s move toward preventative medicine through genetic testing.