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The Human Genome Project, the most ambitious
biological research program ever undertaken, was born in
controversy. Heralded by its more enthusiastic proponents
as a quest for the "Holy Grail of biology" --
and the key, ultimately, to the treatment of a variety of
hereditary diseases -- it has as its initial goal the mapping
of all the genes in the entire three-billion-letter genetic
code embodied in the DNA of a typical human cell. A major
factor in the counterarguments of its opponents: its projected
cost, estimated to run into the billions of dollars, spread
over 10-20 years.
In this firsthand account of the protracted
struggle to launch the genome project, a close observer
of that process -- and sometime participant in it -- unravels
the tangled scientific and political threads of the story,
relying on primary documents gathered even as events unfolded,
supplemented by interviews with all the main actors -- including
the controversial first head of the National Institutes
of Health genome effort, Nobel laureate James D. Watson.
The result is an absorbing case study in the politics of
modern science -- focused in this case on a project with
far-reaching medical and social implications.
Robert Cook-Deegan, M.D., is currently
Director of the Division of Biobehavioral Sciences and Mental
Disorders of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy
of Sciences. A native of Colorado, he obtained his undergraduate
degree in chemistry from Harvard University and his MD from
the University of Colorado. From 1986 to 1988 he directed
a study of the status of genome research for the Office
of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress. The resulting
OTA report, Mapping Our Genes -- Genome Projects: How
Big? How Fast? played an important part in the initial
decision to fund the US genome project. He later served
as executive director of the Biomedical Ethics Advisory
Committee of the Congress and as an adviser to the National
Center for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes
of Health. In addition to his many administrative, consultative,
and other activities, Dr. Cook-Deegan is a member of the
Board of Directors of Physicians for Human Rights and has
participated in three of that group's humanitarian missions
-- to Turkey, Iraq, and Panama.
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