Foreword: The Human Genome Initiative: Genetics' Lightning Rod
![handle is hein.journals/amlmed17 and id is 9 raw text is: Foreword: The Human Genome
Initiative: Genetics' Lightning Rod
Jon Beckwith*
I. INTRODUCTION
The Human Genome Initiative - its name has the ring of awesome
projects populating contemporary science fiction novels. This scientific
enterprise has, in fact, aroused controversy worthy of its fictional coun-
terparts. On the one hand, Human Genome Initiative (HGI) propo-
nents suggest that achieving its goals will provide the Rosetta Stone
or The Holy Grail of life, because deciphering the complete se-
quence of human DNA will tell us everything we want to know about
what makes us human.' Critics within the scientific community lam-
poon HGI as a waste of time that will generate useless information on
what they call junk DNA.2 Further, they argue that it is a big sci-
ence3 project that takes funds away from basic science,4 distorts pri-
* American Cancer Society Research Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics,
Harvard Medical School; member of the Working Group on Ethical, Legal and Social Implica-
tions of the Human Genome Initiative of the National Center for Human Genome Research;
member of the National Academy of Sciences.
I Watson, The Human Genome Project: Past, Present, and Future, 248 SCIENCE 44, 44 (1990)
(When finally interpreted, the genetic messages encoded within our DNA molecules will pro-
vide the ultimate answers to the chemical underpinnings of human existence.). See also D.
SUZUKI & P. KNUDTSON, GENETHICS: THE CLASH BETWEEN THE NEW GENETICS AND HUMAN
VALUES 316-17 (1990).
2 Davis & Colleagues at Harvard Medical School, Department of Microbiology & Molecu-
lar Genetics, The Human Genome and Other Initiatives, 249 SCIENCE 342, 342 (1990) [hereinafter
Davis] (As more than 957 of the human genome does not code for the kinds of functions
that we can recognize, it has been temporarily called 'junk.' ).
3 [T]he scope of... [the Human Genome Initiative (HGI) as originally envisioned]
would be unparalleled in the history of the life sciences. It is estimated that to se-
quence the three billion bases in the human genome, using existing technologies...
would require up to 30,000 person-years of labor, the creation of centralized super-
conductor data bases to store the sequences, and a budget exceeding U.S. $2 billion.
This requirement would place it among the ranks of such ambitious, goal-oriented
Big Science projects of the past as the building of the first atomic bomb or sending
astronauts to the moon.
D. SUZUKI & P. KNUDTSON, supra note 1, at 316-17. Cf. OFFICE OF TECH. ASSESSMENT, U.S.
CONG., MAPPING OUR GENES, GENOME PROJECTS: How BIG, How FAST? 10 (1988) [hereinafter
MAPPING OUR GENES] (OTA rejects this categorization, noting that HGI will not require
budgets as large as such megaprojects, nor are the technical ends as focused.).
4 Davis, supra note 2, at 342; Yaes, Letter to the Editor: Funding the Human Genome Project, 264](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/amlmed17&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Foreword: The Human Genome Initiative: Genetics' Lightning Rod
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most