January 24, 2002
Genome Project subject of Faculty Lecture
| Walter Neary |
| Health Sciences News & Community Relations |
Only a year ago, you couldn’t get away from the word “genetics.” Genetic superpeople were showing up all over the television and computer. Two rival groups were sequencing the human genome, and news coverage sometimes came across like an account of two football teams battling in Husky Stadium.
If this phase of publicity about genetics and the genome has peaked, one of the founders of the Human Genome Project, Maynard Olson, could not be happier.
“I suspect that the human genome has had its day at center stage,” he says. “Nothing stays on center stage all that long — and, in this case, that’s good.”
Olson, a professor of medicine and genome sciences and director of the UW Genome Center, will present the 26th Annual Faculty Lecture on The Human Genome Project: A Story of Scientific Discovery and Societal Values. The event begins at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 31, in 130 Kane Hall. A reception in the Walker-Ames Room will follow the lecture.
Genomics, Olson says, is an accelerant — a way to speed up many areas of biomedical research —rather than an end in itself. He believes the stem cell debate — and all the prominence of Dolly a few years ago — are more indicative than the Human Genome Project of where public attention about biomedical research is headed.
“Ten years from now, there will be many more practical manipulations of biological systems than we see today,” Olson says. “This research will rely on genomic information and techniques, but the focus will be on the practical applications themselves. Certainly one of the great challenges in the future will be society’s adjustment to this new biology.”
Olson plans to divide his talk into two areas. The first will explore the study of genetics over the last century and its culmination in the Human Genome Project. This part of the lecture will focus on the intellectual history of 20th century genetics and the genome project.
“Genome science was first criticized for the odd reason that it was not hypothesis-driven,” Olson says. “The mantra in biomedical research is that good research is hypothesis-driven, while bad research is descriptive. Bad research just gathers data and does not answer any particular questions. Because genomics was about gathering data rather than answering questions, there was guilt by association with a discredited style of descriptive science. I plan to talk about how we ended up with the field of genomics, which has these odd characteristics, and how this field transformed biology.”
Olson will also highlight his observations about the genome project itself, particularly the way in which it became highly politicized as it reached its climax. Olson was a major public critic of the commercial venture that was seeking to privatize the project.
“Like all human activities, the genome project unfolded in a particular time, place and social context,” he says. While the scientific goal was to learn about ourselves by analyzing the sequence of our genome, we also learned a lot about human nature and about the strains present in contemporary society by the actual conduct of the Human Genome Project.”
Some of these strains, Olson says, involved the different value systems of the academic and commercial sectors. Others simply reflected the anxiety inherent in a historical period during which the public is absorbing new scientific concepts and considering their implications. One example of this process was the movie Gattaca, which portrays a future society of sterile genetic determinism. Olson does not expect genetics to take us in this direction, but increasing genetic knowledge and applications of this knowledge will change the human experience.
The Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin coined the phrase “genome mania” to describe the obsession with genes and genomes during the past few years. Olson will articulate his views about which aspects of genomics reflected real scientific and cultural progress, and which were simply hype.
“Genomics was a scientific revolution,” he says. “It changed the way we think about and study biology. I’m going to talk about what was revolutionary about it. But I will also explore the interactions between this scientific revolution and the world outside the university. We need to improve our understanding of the interplay between science and society. Certainly, the Human Genome Project provides a powerful case study.”
The Faculty Lecture is intended to honor current or emeriti faculty whose research, scholarship, or art is widely recognized by their peers and whose achievements have had a substantial impact on their profession, on the research or performance of others, and perhaps on society as a whole.
