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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>Please join us
November 1 for a talk by our friend and colleague Victor McElheny:</span><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Consolas;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'> </span></b><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Consolas;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>Genomic
History: Open Items</span></b><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Consolas;
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'> </span><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Consolas;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='color:black'>DATE:
Monday, November 1</span></b><b><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Consolas;
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='color:black'>TIME:
4:00pm-6:00pm</span></b><b><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Consolas;
color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='color:black'>ROOM:
</span>E51-275<span style='color:black'><br>
<br>
</span></b><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Just finishing a survey of the history of the 20-year-old
Human Genome Project and its immediate results Drawing the Map of Life, Basic
Books, 2010) makes me acutely conscious of the large number of unanswered or
partly answered questions relating to this immense and still unfolding aspect
of contemporary biology. Several of these concern the origins of what many
thought was an improbable enterprise:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>1) the relative influence of technical advances, 2)
discoveries of gene-related diseases, 3) the political experience of the
“War on Cancer” and the recombinant DNA controversy in the 1970s,
4) the difficulty in measuring environmental sources of cancer, and 5) the
desire to demonstrate the medical utility of molecular biology. Among other
open items: 1) the technologically conservative choice to use existing DNA
sequencing technology for the big push to the first complete human sequence; 2)
detailed management of the global non-profit human genome consortium, evidenced
in multi-time-zone Friday teleconferences of which extensive notes exist; 3)
the technical evolution of the profusion of competing “next
generation” sequencing machines that are bringing the day of $1,000 human
genomes very close; 4) the influence of ethical concerns on the course of the project;
and 5) controversy over the relative role of rare or common variants in
increasing or decreasing an individual’s risks of disease. All this
points to the need, in the fairly near future, of a comprehensive history of
genomics, probably by multiple authors. Could this be ready by the 25th
anniversary of the project in 2015?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText>Speaker. Victor McElheny, a science journalist since
1957, was founding director of STS’ daughter program, the Knight Science
Journalism Fellowships, from 1982 to 1998, when he became an STS Visiting
Scholar. Since then, he as published three books, Insisting on the Impossible,
The Life of Edwin Land, Inventor of Instant Photography (Perseus, 1998); Watson
and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution (Perseus 2003); and Drawing the Map of
Life: Inside the Human Genome Project (Basic Books, 2010). Earlier he was a
staff reporter for the Charlotte (NC) Observer, Science magazine, the Boston
Globe, and the New York Times, covering such topics as science in Antarctica,
the nuclear energy program of India, the Apollo lunar landing program, and,
starting in 1960, advances in biological science. In 1978-82, he was the first
director of the Banbury Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.<o:p></o:p></p>
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