From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Mar 18 2002 - 11:45:03 MST
Damien Broderick reviews:
> The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome
> By John Sulston and Georgina Ferry
> Bantam/Random House Australia, 310pp, $A55.00
> ...
> Does it matter, though, finally? Sulston shows how the public side of the
> race was muffled or even effectively silenced in the USA by politics, for
> nobody could speak out against market interests without upsetting Congress,
> risking the sack or loss of government funds.Well, isn't this in turn just
> another ideological spin? Sulston is clearly and unashamedly an old leftie
> humanist who inveighs against `the power of the rich countries and of the
> transnational corporations... used in a bullying and inequitable fashion.'
Sulston's pique seems to be based on a false premise: that there is a
public perception that the success of the Human Genome Project represented
a triumph of private enterprise over a government program. But I don't
believe that this is how the public sees it, at least not in the U.S.
Even among libertarians, who are predisposed to believe the worst about
government, I don't think many would be comfortable giving the private
system this much credit.
At most I think people might say that Venter's challenge forced the
government program to get cracking and solve the problem more quickly.
The competition forced them to abandon their leisurely schedule and
produce the results that many years sooner. But in the end I think the
perception is that the government at least tied Venter.
More generally, I think most Americans are quite oblivious to some of
the issues which are of overwhelming importance to British leftists.
The characterization of the conflict as being a cross-Atlantic rivalry,
with the government HGP program as being born out of a British effort,
in contrast with the "brash Americanism" of Venter, is new to me.
The significance of the fact that the HGP published in a British
journal while Venter published in America was also new. Likewise the
casting of the competition in ideological terms as left versus right is
contrary to the American perception. I think Americans generally see
it pragmatically, that the competition made both efforts work a little
harder and everyone benefited as a result.
Hal
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