How personal genomics is like Michelangelo’s David

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Credit: jay8085/Flickr

In researching a book about genetics over the past four years, I’ve found a field that stands in a bizarre but lovely state of confusion—taken aback, but eager to advance; balanced tenuously between wild ambition and a deep but troubling humility. In the 13 years since the sequencing of the first human genome, the field has solved puzzles that 14 years ago seemed hopeless.

Yet geneticists with any historical memory hold a painful awareness that their field has fallen short of the glory that seemed close at hand when Francis Collins, Craig Venter, and Bill Clinton announced their apparent triumph in June 2000.

Many geneticists who have closely experienced or witnessed disappointment feel keenly their field’s constraints and difficulties. And yet—who can resist reaching for such a prize?

Read the full, original story here: Genetics’ Rite of Passage

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