3 ms·

> "The question is: what health benefits have people got out of it, and what will they get in the future?" Current health benefits have been largely minimal, r

> "The question is: what health benefits have people got out of it, and what will they get in the future?" Current health benefits have been largely minimal, relative to what was promised/expected (I'm actually not sure if anything was promised, so expected may be a more appropriate word). That being said, looking upon that as a failure is incredibly short sighted and one dimensional. When the project was started, it was expected to bring about a semi-immediate revolution in medicine. As it turns out, many things relating to genes, genetic regulation, disease, etc. are more complicated than scientists had originally thought, which we discovered because of the human genome project, so this mini-renaissance hasn't really happened. However, to develop new techniques and approaches, new ways of thinking and understanding, we needed to know about this complexity. Arguing that the HGP has failed patient care (in whatever metrics you choose) is the equivalent to punching a horse you bought to take you on an uncharted journey which turned out to be a lot longer than anticipated. You have to go the distance anyway, no one is to blame for the extra distance, and the horse got you a lot further than you would have on foot.

akiselev 13y ago
I don't know what was promised but to expect results so soon from a project with such a massive amount of data isn't just short sighted, it's hypocritical and silly. The very public that will eventually benefit from the project are the ones who drive the economic and political forces that influence the speed of both preclinical R&D and the regulatory approval process. I believe the process from academic research to market drug is in the range of 10-20 years and that's the time it would take ONE drug that is based off of the human genome project to reach the market. Furthermore, in order to really be able to effectively work with this much and this kind of information, to effectively hack and play around with it, we need to develop physical models. We need to simulate and study the effects of changes in the genome in a quantified and automated way which requires an even greater level of technology in cloning/in vitro organ growth (the latter of which seems to be steadily progressing every year). We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the broad philosophical implications of genetic engineering as a civilization, yet alone be able to show drugs and therapies with years of use. The greatest years for the HGP are still to come.

akiselev 13y ago

I don't know what was promised but to expect results so soon from a project with such a massive amount of data isn't just short sighted, it's hypocritical and silly. The very public that will eventually benefit from the project are the ones who drive the economic and political forces that influence the speed of both preclinical R&D and the regulatory approval process. I believe the process from academic research to market drug is in the range of 10-20 years and that's the time it would take ONE drug that is based off of the human genome project to reach the market. Furthermore, in order to really be able to effectively work with this much and this kind of information, to effectively hack and play around with it, we need to develop physical models. We need to simulate and study the effects of changes in the genome in a quantified and automated way which requires an even greater level of technology in cloning/in vitro organ growth (the latter of which seems to be steadily progressing every year). We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the broad philosophical implications of genetic engineering as a civilization, yet alone be able to show drugs and therapies with years of use. The greatest years for the HGP are still to come.