Is Britain really so anti-science?

Those who so often worry that the British public feel nothing but animosity towards science may be breathing a huge sigh of relief this week. News last week that one of the 23 chromosomes in the human genome had been entirely mapped was met with almost universal good feeling. Those who expected the media and the public to complain must have been sorely disappointed.

Two elements of the story might account for this positive attitude towards the mapping of chromosome 22. The first is that the research has taken place in the public sphere. The image of the Human Genome Project benefits greatly from the fact that it is an international collaboration of scientists who immediately make their findings publicly available on the web. With funding from the United States government and, in the UK, the Wellcome Trust, they have no commercial gain to make from their research and are therefore not racing to patent the sequences that they discover.

Much has been made of this rather holy alliance, particularly since rivals in the private sector are hot on their heels. A private enterprise in the US, fronted by the maverick Craig Venter, is apparently racing to map the genome faster than those involved in the Human Genome Project. And it helps that the good guys have won the first battle.

The second reason that there has been a positive response to the mapping of chromosome 22 is that the it was a British team that did most of the work. The public acceptance of a scientific breakthroughs is always helped at least a little if it takes place on domestic soil. As Matt Ridley meekly observes, 'since this is a collaboration, not a competition, nobody is keeping the score, but let us console ourselves for the rugby and the cricket with the thought that at least we can do genetics.' As with the discovery of the structure of DNA, the first IVF baby and the first clone of an adult animal, a little bit of patriotic fervour goes a long way.

These factors help make the mapping of the human genome more palatable to society than something like genetically modified foods. But perhaps the main reason is that all of this is rather abstract. Understanding what genes are and how they work requires such a conceptual shift from where we are currently at, that it is difficult to find something concrete to object to. Instead, we are wowed by the amazing nature of DNA and human attempts to tame it.

Perhaps when we get down to the nitty gritty of how all this information will be used in a clinical setting, sparks will fly. But let's hope that at least some of the enthusiasm remains when we get there.