From genomes to cures--a long way to go. More than a year after the publication of the first draft of the human genome, scientists took stock of its implications for science and society.

Abstract

The publication of the human genome caused quite a stir. US President of the time Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain both lauded the deciphering of the ‘book of life’, and the media—as well as many scientists—never tired of stating that a new era in medicine had dawned. Since the dust has now settled, a degree of sobriety has replaced the initial euphoria. This more realistic attitude was evident at the Science & Society Conference ‘From genomes to cures’ that was jointly organised by EMBO and EMBL last November in Heidelberg, and which took stock of the promises, expectations, fears and drawbacks of sequencing the human genome. ‘The information provides a new tool for science and medicine,’ Samuel Broder, Senior Vice President of Celera Genomics in Rockville, MD, said in the opening talk. And the implementation of this tool, rather than its creation, will be the true revolutionary breakthrough. As the role of specific genes in any disease can now potentially be deciphered ‘in ways that you wouldn't be thinking of in the realm of molecular biology,’ the use of this information will form the basis of biomedical research in the future, Broder said. Samuel Broder: ‘We have challenges of almost transcendental difficulty to overcome.’ © Maj Briu Hansen ![][1] > The implementation of this new information, rather than its creation, will be the true revolutionary breakthrough Indeed, the tasks ahead for medicine are numerous. Broder showed a collage of diseases caused by microbes, parasites and their vectors—most commonly occurring in the developing world—that was a clear reminder of the problems still unsolved. It is up to science to provide the tools to fight these ‘agents of suffering and pain’, as Broder called them. Turning to developed countries, he commented, ‘I think there has been progress but we need … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif