The Human Genome Project was officially started in 1990 by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. The project was originally planned to last 15 years, but due to technological advances the project was completed two years earlier in April 2003, 50 years on from when Drs Watson and Crick published their paper on the structure of DNA.
There were six main objectives to the Human Genome Project, they were to:
- Identify all the approximate 30,000 genes in human DNA.
- Determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA.
- Store this information in databases.
- Improve tools for data analysis.
- Transfer related technologies to the private sector.
- Address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.
Scientists in over 1000 laboratories around the world have contributed to the Human Genome Project. The largest contribution from a single institution being that of The Sanger Institute, the only British contributor, completed almost a third of the sequence.
The major benefit to come from the human genome project is to have an understanding about how genetic diseases occur, how they can be treated and better yet, how they can be prevented.
The director of the Sanger Institute Professor Allan Bradley said that “completing the human genome was a vital step on a long road, but that the eventual health benefits could be phenomenal.”
"Just one part of this work - the sequencing of chromosome 20 - has already accelerated the search for genes involved in diabetes, leukaemia and childhood eczema.”
The DNA pioneer James Watson and also director of The Human Genome Project told a press conference “When we know the face of the enemy... we will try to cure the disease or lessen its effects”.
Identifying genes can now be done in days instead of years. But for medicine, the real challenge is to move from knowing which malfunctioning gene or genes cause a particular condition to knowing how to do something about it.
A much more controversial idea is that of genetic screening and ‘designer babies’. This is where genetic disorders can be identified and then eradicated from the embryo so that the baby can grow in good health and without genetic diseases. This is a tremendous accomplishment however some people feel that it is against nature and therefore wrong. The idea of designer babies takes this even further so that the parents can choose their offspring’s personality, talents, height, hair colour and much more to create a ‘super baby’. These ideas are extremely controversial especially as they can be linked with the ideas of Adolf Hitler and his plans to create a superior human race, which contributed to the largest war in history.
A simple example is found in the following 1991 quotation from U.S. News & World Report:
“Society's knotty decisions will become even more tangled as the massive Human Genome Project lumbers toward its goal of mapping the location of every human gene, including those that govern such traits as intelligence, coordination and grace. That knowledge will expand the potential of genetic engineering far beyond the correction of disease and push it toward the realm of social engineering.”
Bibliography
Mclean S “Biological Sciences Review”, Volume 12, Number 4, March 2000 – page 36-38
Klug W and Cummings M (1993) “Essentials of Genetics” – page 365
Indge B, Rowland M and Baker M (2000) “A New Introduction to Biology” – page 133 + 164
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