Bill Tammeus
The genome triumph: Though it's laudable, DNA project won't tell life's secrets
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Scientists this month will celebrate a remarkable achievement that almost certainly will lead to better health care for all of us.
But as they raise a toast to the completion of the sequencing of the human genome, we should not imagine that medical utopia is just around the corner.
Life - especially in its labyrinthine, cellular details - is almost breathtakingly complicated. And the sobering reality is that 50 years after James Watson and Francis Crick described the double helix of DNA, our ignorance about exactly how the human body works is almost encyclopedic.
Researchers completed a rough draft of the human genome - the instructions in each cell for how life grows and maintains itself - in 2000. Since then, scientists have worked to finish sequencing the genome. That is, they have been determining the precise order of the three billion bits of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that carry hereditary information.
They're finally done. And the National Human Genome Research Institute is planning a celebration and seminar April 14 and 15 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
The completed genome sequence is a momentous accomplishment for researchers trying to sort out how genes work and what diseases genetic defects cause. After all, the 30,000 to 35,000 genes scattered along the strands of DNA determine a great deal about our lives.
But it's wrong to suggest that they determine everything. And we set ourselves up for huge disappointment if we expect the life sciences now to save us from most diseases by a week from Tuesday.
I like the way Bruce R. Korf, chairman of the University of Alabama-Birmingham's Department of Genetics, puts it: "We have given names to genes, but we are a long way from knowing how they function. It is like somebody handing you a city phone book and hoping you can use it to determine what is going to happen tomorrow in that city."
We can blame some of the hype about biomedical progress on politicians. When the first draft of the human genome was announced in mid-2000, President Bill Clinton swooned that it was "the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind." And British Prime Minister Tony Blair called it "a revolution in medical science whose implications far surpass even the discovery of antibiotics."
Such language can make people with chronic or terminal illness imagine they soon will be able to resume their normal lives because biomedicine is about to give them back their health.
There certainly are reasons to be hopeful because the life sciences are making steady, encouraging progress. But the road ahead is long and difficult. And it's simply wrong to sell false hope to desperate people. That was clear to me last fall when I attended a seminar at the National Institutes of Health on stem cell research, itself the occasion of much hype. And it's clear to me now as NIH prepares to mark completion of the genome sequencing work.
The practice of medicine has evolved extensively over the centuries. Even in my lifetime, changes have been dramatic. For instance, treatments that my home-visiting family physician didn't have when I had three bouts of childhood pneumonia are available today for other children.
But despite such advances, much of medicine still is instinct, guesswork and, well, art. Knowing the human genome will help a lot. It will give health care professionals a reliable map of the body's internal wiring.
As Korf says, "For the first time, medicine will be able to approach medical problems by being able to ... understand precisely what is wrong and determine if it is fixable."
In other words, scientists will have given doctors a crucial new tool to help cure what ails us. But what ails us - with rare exceptions - is not solely determined by our genes. It's much more complicated than that, involving our environment, lifestyle and maybe even our own spirit.
It helps to recall the words of Psalm 139:18, that the human body
is "fearfully and wonderfully made." It does not yield its secrets
easily.
Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bill Tammeus' latest book is "A Gift of Meaning." To order it, please click on title. To comment on his column, please click here.
03/25/03: In a wounded world, celebrate life's hope
03/20/03: Peace lover ponders the need for war
03/13/03: Science asks us to imagine a world in 11 dimensions
02/27/03: War has long come naturally to humankind
02/22/03: Trying to decipher the vexing French
02/11/03: A worthy crusade for individual worth
01/30/03: Indelible ache of Sept. 11
01/24/03: An issue of great gravity moves forward
01/17/03: Peculiar about being eccentric
01/10/03: Gambling infects with false hope
12/31/02: Quotable and notable in 2002
12/24/02: The faltering war on terrorism
12/11/02: Sky's the limit --- sort of
11/05/02: Thoughtful about uploading
10/29/02: We naively ignore the inevitability of death
10/24/02: Patriotism exceeds nationalism
09/18/02: Misuse of religion is timeless
08/21/02: Where church and state are one How long can Saudi Arabia's puritanical version of Islam survive?
08/13/02: LETTER FROM CAIRO: Meet the Egyptian writer who provided foundation for radical form of Islam
08/08/02: Letter from Riyadh: Moderate Muslims must reassert control over Islam
07/31/02: Journey of discovery starts at Ground Zero
06/07/02: Life rebukes death's power
05/31/02: Reasonable doubts about executions
05/10/02: Business savvy for graduates
05/02/02: Exporting our exclusivity
04/25/02: Life's stories carry messages about values
04/19/02: Our life force's search for fellow life forces
03/27/02: Can corporations behave ethically?
03/19/02: Space Family Robinsons
02/21/02: Lock, stocks and bonds
02/14/02: In space, the dark matters
02/07/02: Train doctors to have caring hands and hearts
01/31/02: A different feel to my life and to my country?
01/24/02: How green is my universe?
01/17/02: The end is near, eventually
01/08/02: Important lessons arrive out of the past
12/19/01: Lost in the cloning debate
12/10/01: It's all in the name: Unraveling the mystery of Osama's whereabouts
11/19/01: Flying with damaged trust
11/02/01: Recent, recognized research is a hard nut to crack
10/31/01: Many paradoxes in life
10/25/01: Newly found planets show the cosmos is still strange
10/19/01: Just getting caught up
10/17/01: It was a time for tea and sympathy
10/08/01: What makes an authentic patriot?
10/04/01: It's OK to twist and shout
09/17/01: One precious life among many
09/13/01: Remember who we are
09/11/01: Sometimes all children need is shelter from the storm
09/05/01: Couldn't run or throw, but a hero just the same
08/28/01: Lesson for the scientific faithful: Some theories come with strings attached
08/27/01: When waste in space is a waste of space
08/21/01: In complex world, we lack tools to carve out understanding
08/09/01: Visited while asleep by gang of magical mischief makers
08/03/01: Recognizing the limits of one's capacity
07/27/01: We are more than the sum of our work days
07/12/01: Some stars, like some people, never shine
07/11/01: Our deeply embedded need for order
07/03/01: Not-so-famous tour explores not-so-rich neighborhoods
06/28/01: Driven to tell the truth about golf and government
06/25/01: When poetry becomes destructive
06/21/01: We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a word from deep space
06/14/01: Theory of revolution explains why some things get lost
06/11/01: Shamanic gewgaws
06/06/01: Charity begins at homes with lemonade stands
05/30/01: When are wars worth dying in?
05/23/01: Cruising along that bumpy highway
05/09/01: If you're in the write mood, wish the U.S. happy birthday
05/07/01: Killing McVeigh will wound us all
05/01/01: Dubya reinforcing negative GOP stereotypes?
