Wakley-Wu Prize Essay Author Lien Teh first encountered precision medicine with great idealism and the belief that he had cracked the ultimate code of cancer. He believed that precision medicine would make it possible to completely abandon radiotherapy and chemotherapy and use drugs for truly precise attacks. He later realized that his optimism stemmed from ignorance of the complexities of medicine. Precision medicine is not an oracle. It is still evolving and cannot support the entire treatment system on its own. It cannot be completely separated from the help of traditional methods.