[Sci-tech-public] Victor McElheny talk on the Genome Nov. 1

[David Mindell]

Please join us November 1 for  a talk by our friend and colleague Victor
McElheny:

 

Genomic History: Open Items

          

DATE:           Monday, November 1

TIME:            4:30pm-6:30pm

ROOM:          E51-149



An abstract from Victor:

  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:  

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?

 

 

 

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.

 

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