But there is no guarantee that the policy of successive governments, or of the same government, will remain unchanged. We were told that public finance of the human genome project would keep the human genome in the public domain. That has not been the case. The undue focus on human genomics has narrowed the options for healthcare and foreclosed other promising approaches. It is also a major distraction from the real causes of ill-health, which are overwhelmingly environmental and social, and will end up marginalizing and victimising those most in need of care and treatment.
Most diseases are complex, and correlation between genes and disease is weak.
Genetic differences are, much more often than not, swamped by environmental influences. And even those are subject to influence by many other genes and by the environment, so that prognosis based on single genes are notoriously unreliable. Practically all populations are genetically diverse, with hundreds of variants in every gene. Thus each individual is genetically unique in their 'predisposition' to different diseases. The health of nations will be infinitely better served by devoting resources to disease prevention, to phasing out the hundreds of known carcinogens among industrial and agricultural chemicals, rather than by identifying the genes that 'predispose' people to ill-health.