So, Venter's statements about how large the variances among humans are in some ill-defined absolute sense are meaningless. Jay Gould unburdened himself of some of his trademark sonorous imponderables in The New York Times . But the deepest ramifications will be scientific or philosophical in the largest sense. The wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code. We already have a very good idea of how important genes are from twin and adoption studies.
Identical twins are genetically identical.
For a surprising number of traits, identical twins raised apart are more similar than fraternal twins raised together. And the correlations between adopted siblings tend to be very low. Whatever the final number of genes turns out to be can't make those facts disappear. This spin is the logical equivalent of Exxon announcing that they've discovered that cars have 30,000 parts in them instead of 100,000, and therefore you should buy expensive premium gas. The posturing is defensive.