The Human Genome, a Decade Later

摘要

On June 13,2010, the New York Times ran a front-page story about the hyping of genomics. Headlined "A Decade Later, Gene Map Yields Few New Cures," the article asserted that the Human Genome Project, the results of which were announced at a White House press confer-ence in June 2000 and published in detail in February 2001, had yet to deliver on its promise to find the root causes of many common diseases. The genome, the story argued, held more complexity than many scientists had imagined, making it difficult to isolate the func-tions of the three billion DNA units, or base pairs, whose sequence the project had determined. Other journalists, and bloggers, soon weighed in somberly on the dearth of results from the project, which had taken 13 years and $3 billion to complete.