Revolution Postponed: Why the Human Genome Project Has Been Disappointing
The Human Genome Project has failed so far to produce the medical miracles that scientists promised. Biologists are now divided over what, if anything, went wrong—and what needs to happen next
By Stephen S. Hall October 18, 2010
A decade ago biologists and nonbiologists alike gushed with optimism about the medical promise of the $3-billion Human Genome Project. In announcing the first rough draft of the human “book of life” at a White House ceremony in the summer of 2000, President Bill Clinton predicted that the genome project would “revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases.”
THE LOGIC BEHIND GENOME STUDIES
Much research into the genetic contributions to common diseases has started with the seemingly logical assumption that DNA variants occurring frequently in the human population would be at fault. Some argue, though, that this reasoning is faulty. Image: Bryan Christie
A year earlier Francis S. Collins, then head of the National Human Genome Research Institute and perhaps the project’s most tireless enthusiast, painted a grand vision of the “personalized medicine” likely to emerge from the project by the year 2010: genetic tests indicating a person’s risk for heart disease, cancer and other common maladies would be available, soon to be followed by preventives and therapies tailored to the individual.
Even before the first full sequence of DNA “letters” in human chromosomes was deciphered, a well-funded genomics juggernaut—armed with powerful sequencing and mapping technologies, burgeoning databases and a logical game to “mine miracles,” as Collins put it, from the genome—set out to identify key genes underlying the great medical scourges of humankind.
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Read more here/Leia mais aqui: Scientific American
