Ethical And Social Implications: The Human Genome Project

Majority of the time if you ask someone to explain genomics to you, act like they have no idea what language you are speaking. Genomics is a very prominent field of science that has great potential in the future, yet the general public really doesn’t know what it is. While most sciences have been around for a while, genomics is a very young and mysterious field. The discovery of DNA and the questions we have about evolution has led to interest into the specific genes that make up our DNA. Through this curiosity we have been able to sequence the Human Genome, and been able to alter genes in organisms to affect how they appear or react to certain stimuli. This is just scratching the surface of the potential, and there are all kinds of ideas of

The Human Genome Project took off in 1990, questing to sequence the Human Genome, which contains 3 billion genes, or base pairs, in the complete set. This project was in the public sector, funded by the government. Being that it was publically funded research, it ran as an Ethical, Legal and Social Implications program. This was to help address any type of issues that might arise from the research done, ranging from discrimination to religious beliefs. The target date for completion was set in 2005 for the public sector of the program, but in May of 1998 Craig Ventera announced that his company, Celera Genomics, which he claimed would sequence the entire human genome by 2001. This competition helped accelerate the progress, and in June of 2000, President Bill Clinton announced that they had formed a rough draft of the Human Genome map; A map he considered not only greater than the original map of the US, but one that he called, “the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human

The first area that seems to be discussed the most is the ability to create personalized medicine. Up until recently it has been hard to read every patient’s genome, and it took forever. Earlier this year, the FDA cleared the use of the Illumina MiSeqDx, which is a machine that allows hospitals to sequence a patient’s genome in only a few hours, and much more accurately. This is making the ability to use personalized medicine a reality in the near future. This will allow doctors to understand the risks of a patient based on their code. The biggest area that can benefit from this is all the different types of cancer. If doctors can find what gene mutated causing the malignancy, they can use specified medicine rather than just hoping radiation fixes