The Human Genome Project is perhaps the most significant research effort in the history of science. It's as important as the Copernican revolution in cosmology, with implications broader than the Manhattan Project. The promise of the Human Genome Project is the ability to understand and control the fundamentals of human life. The end result will be a roadmap of our genetic code. There are significant questions to be answered: How will we use this information? Who will have access to the genetic therapies that will be developed? Somewhere at the intersection of genetic technology and health policy, leaning against a streetlamp, there is this question: will these discoveries change everything?

Dr. Daniel Drell, manager of the Human Genome Project's Ethical Legal and Social Issues Program (ELSI) speaks of the impossibility of altering a gene pool 6 billion individuals deep. However this does not address the socio-economic lines that cut across our society. Will the information gained from this effort give new physiological expression to class privilege? Or will we all benefit from the eradication of hereditary diseases?

The question is made even more complicated by Celera Genomic Group's parallel effort to map the human genome. Beginning in September of 1999, Celera has succeeded in sequencing 90% of the genome using their 'shotgun sequencing' technique. They expect to finish by the end of the summer of 2000. What are the implications of portions of the human genome being patented and licensed to leading drug-discovery corporations? Perhaps it will lead to the rapid discovery of cures for diseases such as Huntington's chorea. Or, perhaps it will block access to information academic researchers require to make further discoveries.

For a century now, academic research has successfully collaborated with private, for-profit companies. We owe many of the miracles of modern medicine to this fruitful pairing. Is it possible though that this paradigm is shifting?

At this point, early in the year 2000, the effort to map the human genome seems to pose more questions than it answers. It presents an interesting opportunity to observe how our culture will respond to the doors that these technologies open. How and where will we draw the line now that we can reprogram nature? Already by executive order there is a five-year moratorium on research into human cloning.

In this archive we will seek to present all sides as the answers to these questions unfold. Though the lines are not impermeable, we will divide this information into three categories: Genomic Science and Technology, the Commercial Aspects of Genomic Technology, and the social implications of these technologies. This will be an ongoing project to trace the development of this new world now in its infancy.

return to index