Two distinguished British commentators, Matt Ridley and Steve Jones, disagree about the genome's significance. With an enthusiastic book out about the genome, I am not just contributing to the genome hype. I might even be said to have a vested interest in it. Before I started my book, nearly three years ago, I thought the Human Genome Project was going to make a big difference to biology. As metaphors go, the gold mine is a tired cliche, but it can be refreshed by making it literal.
Scientists are a bit like gold miners, the gold they seek being nuggets of new knowledge.
In the intervening 50 years, scientists have been hard at work sinking the mine. Now, this month, they begin production in earnest. The human genome contains a universe of new information to explore and understand. Take just one example. From 1872 to 1993, virtually nothing was known about Huntington's disease except that it ran in families.