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Scientific Commentary: The Scientific Foundations and Medical and Social Prospects of the Human Genome Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Eric S. Lander
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Extract

We are living through one of the greatest scientific revolutions in history: the “information revolution” in genetics. The revolution is leading to a deep understanding of biological processes and is uncovering the molecular basis of many human diseases and susceptibilities. It is also confronting society with a vast array of choices, and presenting each individual with the question of what knowledge to seek and how to act on that knowledge, My purpose is to discuss the scientific foundations of this revolution and to foreshadow its consequences.

The current scientific revolution has perhaps one appropriate historical precedent: the chemical revolution that followed Dmitri Mendeleev's key insight in 1869 that the elements could be organized in a simple periodic table.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , Fall 1998 , pp. 184 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1998

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References

Suggested Reading

Collins, F.S., “New Goals for the U.S. Human Genome Project: 1998–2003,” Science, 282 (1998): 682–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lander, E.S., “The New Genomics: Global Views of Biology,” Science, 274 (1996): 536–39.Google Scholar
Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council, Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Kevles, D. J. Hood, L., eds., The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Wexler, N.S., Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research (New York: Random House, 1995).Google Scholar
Cook-Deegan, R., The Gene Wars: Science, Politics, and the Human Genome (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994).Google Scholar