If you'd asked a non-scientist a year ago what they thought about the Human Genome Project you would most probably have got a pretty blank expression in reply. Now, your average newspaper reader could probably tell you what the Human Genome Project is, who the major players are and when it's likely to be finished.
Part of the reason for this public interest in sequencing the genome is the press reporting of the apparent animosity between the publicly and privately funded teams engaged in the sequencing effort. Science commentator Matt Ridley has suggested that without the rivalry between Craig Venter (who Robin McKie calls 'the research raptor who hunts genes for cash') and John Sulston ('the committed public servant'), there would have been precious little coverage of the Human Genome Project at all (see BioNews 061, Recommends).
Perhaps Matt Ridley is right: without the war there would be no story. I wrote in BioNews 058 that all the talk of the race to sequence the genome was better than talk of designer babies and super humans. But even better than the race metaphor would be serious discussion of the real implications of the Human Genome Projection. Sequencing the genome has come to be seen as the holy grail, but few have taken time to explain exactly why the genome is being sequenced and what benefits it might bring to mankind.
It was Professor Steve Jones who said that the four most important letters in genetics aren't A, C, G and T, but H, Y, P and E. Over-hyping in genetics is a real problem, but equally troublesome is under-hyping. The sequencing of the human genome will be an amazing moment in human history but, as Ridley observes, it is just the beginning of man's understanding of how he works. Our challenge is to get that balance across to the media and the public.
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