Botstein says he thought while ELSI concerns are valid, the conference needed to be more focused on the fact that the goal of HGP is to create products that are going to be useful to human health.
Despite the potential for abuse, the possible benefits should make us want to try to find ways to use the research positively, says Smith. "We also need to try to increase awareness of the possible benefits of this program to African Americans with diseases like sickle cell, breast cancer, et cetera. Already, the genetic test for breast cancer and several other types of cancers is available.
Diabetes is coming up, and sickle cell is on the horizon," Smith adds. The HGP has spilled over and created the need for computers to speed up and manage the mass of information--equal to 200 hundred phone books for each human genome, according to Drell.
"We have also seen, from the HGP, elucidation of new disease-causing mechanisms and impetus for a whole sector of the biotechnology industry," claims Drell. "The project will create an enormous resource for researchers and lots of new technologies are being developed with lots of good discoveries along the way," says Thomas Murray. "Many of the results of the genome project won't actually be listed as direct results. It's like somebody built an enormous and very sophisticated library for researchers to use who have specific interest in certain diseases."
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