The Genome Program's Conscience

摘要

In October 1988, James D. Wat-son, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, stood before a packed press conference to announce that he had been appointed to head biology's biggest and most ambitious single endeavor: the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health (N1H). When asked about the social implications of this massive effort to decipher the human genetic blueprint, Watson announced--off the cuff, according to a former aide--that a fixed portion of the project's budget would be setaside for studies of how genetics research would impact society. Thus was created what Francis Collins, Watson's successor, calls "the largest investment in bioethics in the history of the world."