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1st
EMBL/EMBO Joint Conference 2000 |
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Session
III |
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The human genome project A scientist's view of what went right and
what went wrong |
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Maynard Olson, Professor, Medicine and Genetics and Director, University of Washington Genome Centre, USA
In
many respects, the Human Genome Project was a great science-policy
success. In the face of great skepticism – even hostility
– its proponents recognized an opportunity to energize
basic biology, to build potent new links between advancing
knowledge in molecular genetics and the practical arts of
agriculture and medicine, to forge strong ties between biology
and information technology, and to capture the public imagination.
They designed a broadly based, scientifically sound program
to take advantage of this opportunity and built political
support for it. Ultimately, they created new institutions
to implement the program and attracted the scientific talent
required for its success. Furthermore, all of these goals
were achieved without excessive centralization or distortion
of proven mechanisms for conducting basic biological research.
However, in the fall of the year 2000, the "rags-to-riches"
story of the Human Genome Project offers some sobering lessons.
We have learned, for instance, that the traditional scientific
culture within which the Human Genome Project has its scientific,
technical, and policy roots is no match for the "new economy."
When companies can change their market valuation by billions
of dollars within a few weeks through sustained, self-serving
distortions of scientific reality, the ordinary mechanisms
by which the scientific community promotes and articulates
its basic values fail. It is too early to assess the magnitude
of the resultant damage. However, the nature of the threat
to basic scientific values is clear:
There has been a politicalization of scientific dialog. The
goal of public pronouncements has ceased to be balanced discussion
of complex issues – the goal is to be perceived as a
winner.
There has been an inflation of public expectations that the
sequencing of the human genome will have immediate, major
benefits for human health.
There has been unprecedented commercialization of early-stage
scientific knowledge.
The tensions between the traditional values of science and
the values of the new economy will not be resolved any time
soon. Scientific traditionalists are presently on the defensive.
We need to reassert ourselves, even if our voices appear quixotic
in the present socioeconomic climate. Climates change.
The Human Genome Project, because of its high public profile,
provides a good rallying point for a reassertion of basic
scientific values. Scientists with an interest in this mission
should sharpen and modernize their message. The three points
enumerated above are offered as a first step in this direction.
Biography
Maynard Olson graduated from Caltech with a Bachelors degree in
chemistry and received his PhD in inorganic chemistry from Stanford
University in 1970, where his thesis advisor was Henry Taube. After
five years on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth
College, he changed his research emphasis to molecular genetics,
working with Benjamin Hall in the Department of Genetics at the
University of Washington. During that period, in the late 1970s,
he participated in early applications of recombinant-DNA techniques
to problems in yeast genetics; his research with Hall included the
first sequencing of a mutant eukaryotic gene and one of the first
applications of restriction-fragment length polymorphisms.
In 1979, he moved to the Department of Genetics at Washington University
in St. Louis, where he became a Professor of Genetics in 1986 and
an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1989.
At Washington University, he participated in the development of
systematic approaches to the analysis of complex genomes, working
both on the yeast and human genomes. This research included the
development of new implementations of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis,
including field-inversion gel electrophoresis, determination of
the first complete electrophoretic karyotype of a eukaryotic organism,
the development of computer-based methods for the construction of
whole-genome physical maps based on clone fingerprints, the development
of the yeast-artificial-chromosome cloning system, and introduction
of STS-content mapping as an approach to the low-resolution physical
mapping of mammalian genomes. In 1992, he was awarded the Genetics
Society of America Medal. Later that year, he moved back to the
University of Washington where he is now Professor of Medicine and
Genetics and Director of the University of Washington Genome Center.
In 1994, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Olson has also participated in the formulation of policy for
the Human Genome Project. In 1987, he served on the National Research
Council Committee on Mapping and Sequencing of the Human Genome,
and from 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Program Advisory Committee
on the Human Genome at the National Institutes of Health. Presently,
he is on the National Human Genome Research Institute Council. |
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