Society and the human genome. Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins Memorial Lecture

In June 2000, the draft sequence of the human genome was announced. It is, and will be for some years, incomplete, but the vast majority is now available. Currently about a third is finished (including two complete chromosomes); the rest has good coverage, but not long-range continuity. First-pass analysis indicates, among other things, fewer genes than expected: about 40000 now looks a likely number. This uncertainty illustrates the difficulty of interpretation: the sequence is not an end in itself, but a resource to be continually reanalysed as our biological understanding increases. That is the scientific reason for releasing it promptly, fully and freely. The social reasons for doing so are even more compelling.