Continuing with our exploration of the vignettes in Science’s 10th anniversary celebration of the human genome project, we run across an interview with Eric Green, who just recently became the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. As with all of these pieces, there’s lots of interesting stuff here. A couple of highlights from the interview:
Q: Why did you set 2020 for when genomics will begin affecting health care? Why is it going to take so long?
Eric Green: When we talk to people who have a historic view of medical advances, they have pointed out that truly changing medical care takes a substantial amount of time. Often decades. And I’ve grown sensitive to the criticisms of genomics by some who believe that since 2003, when the genome project ended, we haven’t sufficiently improved human health 7 years later. So part of the reason is just to be a little bit more realistic and a little more cautious.
Q: Where are you hoping we will be by 2020?
Eric Green: I’m hoping that by 2020 we will have this incredible mountain of information about how genetic variants play a role in disease, that it will just provide an entirely new venue for really thinking about how to both predict disease, maybe prevent disease, and certainly treat disease.
Notice that Dr. Green seems pretty confident in our ability to use genomics to predict and treat disease, but puts a “maybe” in front of prevention.
References
Kaiser, J., Green, E. (2011). The genome project: what will it do as a teenager? Science 331: 660.