The Human Genome at 10: What It Did—and Didn't—Deliver

Happy Birthday, human genome. On June 26, 2000 a group of scientists at the White House announced that they had a working draft of our genetic blueprints. They hadn't sequenced all our genes; the Human Genome Project and its private-sector competitor Celera Genomics still had some gaps to fill in. Still, scientists believed this data might hold clues to the causes of certain diseases and could lead to new treatments. Even before the project's start, some scientists were skeptical: Was mapping our genome a waste of money and time? Even among public hoopla and presidential speeches, scientists cautioned that applying the results would take time. Now, ten years later, many are asking: What have we learned? Here we round up some opinions about the impact of the project. The Bad? Some see fewer medical treatments than advertised. Instead of simple relationships between common variants and specific diseases, sequencing uncovered sheer ...