The Human Genome Project

This is the transcript of my 2 minute Pause for Thought on BBC Radio Humberside on 14th April 2010:

It was seven years ago today that an international consortium of scientists announced to the world that they had completed work on what many regard as the greatest scientific project of all time. This was the completion of the Human Genome Project which involved the complete mapping of the twenty-three thousand genes of a human being. We are already seeing advances in medicine as a direct result of the project, such as the identification of genes associated with diabetes, autism and breast cancer. Ultimately the therapies and treatments that will be developed have the potential to reduce human suffering and unhappiness on an unprecedented scale. One of the things genetics has taught us is how closely related humans are to other animals, sharing 98 per cent of our genes with our closest ape relatives. We have come a long way since great thinkers such Michael Servetus who was the first European to describe the circulation of the blood and Giordano Bruno who first suggested the possibility of life on other planets were burnt at the stake for heresy in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. There is reason to hope that the human race is just at the beginning of the scientific understanding of our world yet to a significant extent we are still wedded to the superstitious beliefs and practices of the ancient world, which hold us back and can exacerbate or even cause the harms that threaten our existence. I think that the time has come for our society to put away childish things and to embrace the world that science has revealed to us, rather than persist with the dogmatic certainties of ancient faiths. The great thing about science is that if a theory is shown to be false, it is discarded and replaced by a better idea. If only the same could be said for all of our discourse.