The Human Genome Project Essay

The Goal of the Human Genome Project is to obtain genetic mapping information and to determine the complete sequence of all human DNA by the year of 2005. The project started in 1990 and 180 million dollars are being spent on it annually. This adds up to a total of over 2 billion dollars for the 15 year budget. Of this 2 billion dollars budgeted, 5% is spent annually on the ethical, legal and social issues. This report focused on some of these issues.

Often, with the discovery of knowledge come difficult questions, thorny ethical issues, and unintended consequences. Armed with this new ability to sequence human genes, science grabbed medicine by the hand and charged into uncharted territory. Could we now “personalize” medicine?

In June 2000, the publicly funded Human Genome Project (HGP) and the private firm Celera Genomics Inc. announced that they had completed sequencing the human genome. This unprecedented accomplishment is expected to enable doctors to diagnose, treat and even prevent numerous genetic diseases. As these two entities worked on sequencing the human genome, there was also a separate and less publicized race to patent as many human genes as possible.

The Human Genome Project: A Government Initiative The Human Genome Project (HGP) is a worldwide effort aimed at analyzing the structure of human DNA and determining the location of the estimated 100,000 human genes, the entire human genome. This effort will study and compare the DNA of other organisms to further our understanding of the human genetic makeup. This unique idea originated shortly after the United States developed and used the atomic bomb. There was a need of information regarding the study of the genome structure, replication, damage, repair and the consequences of genetic mutations especially those that are caused by radiation and chemical by-products of energy production. The U.S. Congress put D.O.E. (The Department of Energy) in charge of this research. The researchers soon realized that the best way to get these results would be to analyze the entire human genome so that they could obtain a reference sequence. The

Science is an astonishing, intellectual field; it teaches humans about life and allows them to alter it in order to reap desirable results. The diligence and intellect of scientists who are able to rework the human body has contributed to the sharing of many beautiful and tear-jerking stories about babies who have been born and patients who have survived. As technology and knowledge about the body increases, people begin to question how much we should use our intelligence to change the bodies that God has created. However, within the medical sphere, specifically with the process of modifying genes, scientists should use their God given gift of intellect to control the evil, residing in the form of diseases, that would otherwise destroy all

The International HapMap Project is a way to research and provide information about specific illnesses that would lead to new findings of preventing, diagnosing, and treating diseases. “The goal of the HapMap Project is to map and understand the patterns of common genetic diversity in the human genome in order to accelerate the search for the genetic cause of human disease” (Thorisson, 2005). They collect DNA and it contains long chains of four chemicals that are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. Within these chemicals they contain our physical traits, our likelihood of struggling from disease, and the response of our bodies to substances in the environment.

It was thirty-one years ago that researchers from around the world sat down to commence what would be the world’s largest collaborative biological project. The Human Genome Project holds many clues about diseases caused by genes and how scientists can translate this knowledge in the area of gene-therapy to treat and cure genetic disorders. The Human Genome Project, in my opinion, is one of the greatest achievements made by mankind and ever since its completion in 2003, I've always wanted to contribute to projects like these.

The Human Genome Project is beneficial to society because it helps create individualized medicine. The Personal Medicine Coalition writes, “Patients with melanoma, leukemia, or metastatic lung, breast, or brain cancers are now routinely offered a “molecular diagnosis” in some clinical centers; this allows their physicians to select tailored treatments that can greatly improve the chances of survival”(4). According to The Personal Medicine Coalition, they explain how the advances in technology has helped create individualized medicine for sick patients. The Human Genome Project uses sick patients and research to then come up with the solution of individual medicine because not everyone is the same and react differently to certain types of medicine. The individualized medicine is increasing the survival rate of the people who have deadly

Human genetic engineering, HGE, is a new technology been incorporated into modern science where the genes or more specifically DNA are manipulated within a living person or zygote.

The Human Genome Project (HGP), an international scientific research project, has educated the public tremendously on various topics concerning DNA and genetics. This study has been beneficial to communities alike. As stated, the HGP sought to identify all the genes in human DNA, determine the sequences of the three billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, store this information in databases, improve tools for data analysis, transfer related technologies to the private sector, and address the ethical, legal, and social issues that may arise from the project. In favor of achieving these goals, scientists studied the genetic makeup of several nonhuman organisms (Human Genome Management Information System, 2011).

(3)The Human Genome project focuses on identifying, sequencing and mapping all genes in the human body. Also to develop faster methods for sequencing DNA. It is an international research project that celebrated its 27th anniversary on 1 October 2017. In comparison, the Human Genome Project can be compared to the Apollo project which brought humanity to the moon.

To begin discussion about the HGP, we first must understand what it is. It is a massive undertaking of collaboration of geneticists that begin in 1990. Their goals are to identify all the estimated 80,000 to 100,000 genes in human DNA and determine the sequences of 3 billion

Compared to just fifteen years ago the applications and horizons of genetic science have expanded enormously, far beyond simply describing how DNA contributes to the formation of life here on earth. The most important practical advances have built on the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, started in 1990. At the associated research cost of over $3 billion US dollars (c.$2.7 billion actual), a combined research initiative succeeded in fully sequencing the genomic makeup of one human.

Ten years ago researchers from the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Japan and China sat down and began developing the most important map ever made. Instead of roads and landmarks, this was a map of letters. It was “a rough map of the 3 billion letters of genetic instructions that make us who [we] are” (“First”). On Monday, 26 June 2000, the researchers announced that the map of the human genome was complete.     

A relatively premature science, genomics has the potential to advance the quality of life for any organism on earth. It will give researchers the ability to gain finally a proper understand of ourselves, and the organisms around us, on a molecular level. The scientists participating in the HGP were the first ones to take this idea and make it reality. With several institutes working around the world, they aimed to provide a complete understanding of the human genome and proteomics, the study of proteins. Recently, there has been an influx of new technologies allowing studies of thousands of genes, single nucleotide polymorphisms, RNAs, and proteins. This flood of information will keep an exponential growth that will produce massive booms