Sidebar

1
Sidebar

• Early on, some Human Genome Project researchers
  insisted that only a single person needed to be
  sequenced as a template for all others

2
Question With respect to this idea, where do you
stand?

• A. Strongly agree
• B. Agree
• C. Not sure
• D. Disagree
• E. Strongly disagree

3
Some Context

• Humans share over 99 of their genes in common
• All people are pretty much the same
• Avoids the bug-a-boo of race seen in Eugenics
  movements
• Dr. Robert Swartz (Tufts University), Race is a
  social construct not a scientific classification.

4
More Context

• Humans share 98.4 of our genes with chimpanzees
  and almost two-thirds of our genes with
  drosophila fruit flies

5
Even More Context

• Dr. M. Anne Spence, University of California,
  Irvine on HGPs ethics committee
• Reported that there was a widely shared feeling
  that gender ought not to matter and should be
  ignored in initial sequencing
• Most drug research carried out on white,
  middle-aged men
• People, especially women, often have radically
  different responses to the same medicines

6
Question With respect to this idea, where do you
stand now?

• A. Strongly agree
• B. Agree
• C. Not sure
• D. Disagree
• E. Strongly disagree

7
The Devils in the Details

• Yes, humans are very similar to each other (99)
• Highly significant small differences, though
• Dr. Neil Risch (Lamond Distinguished Professor
  and director of the Institute for Human Genetics
  at University of California, San Francisco)
  What we are going to find is precisely that the
  other percent plays a role in determining why one
  person gets schizophrenia or diabetes while
  another doesnt, why one person responds well to
  a drug while another cant tolerate it.