The Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford. Professor Dawkins has also written a number of books, the most recent being Unweaving the Rainbow. Along with Bach's music, Shakespeare's sonnets and the Apollo Space Program, the Human Genome Project is one of those achievements of the human spirit that makes me proud to be human. It is also pleasingly appropriate that the Sanger Center has contributed so largely to this magnificent enterprise of international cooperation, given that the founding genius of macromolecular sequencing is Fred Sanger.
Research always builds on previous knowledge.
Human Genome Project sequence data has been accumulated more and more rapidly on the web, publicly available for some years. The achievement of a fairly complete draft sequence is the celebration of a milestone, rather than the sudden unveiling of previously unsuspected treasures. But it is a hugely significant milestone and there are many treasures there for health related research. It is rather like reaching the top of a mountain pass and seeing in front of you a fertile plain, rich with new ideas, new methods, new techniques and new concepts for understanding the complexity of human biology in health and disease. This progress will come over future decades as the new information on the human genome is translated into useful discoveries by scientists and doctors of virtually every discipline.