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This week we’re dedicating the whole show to the 20th anniversary of the publication of the human genome. Today, about 30 million people have had their genomes sequenced. This remarkable progress has brought with it issues of data sharing, privacy, and inequality.
Host Sarah Crespi spoke with a number of researchers about the state of genome science, starting with Yaniv Erlich, from the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science and CEO of Eleven Biotherapeutics, who talks about privacy in the age of easily obtainable genomes.
Next up Charles Rotimi, director of the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health at the National Human Genome Research Institute, discusses diversity or lack thereof in the field and what it means for the kinds of research that happens.
Do you recall the banner headlines of 2020 about the mapping of the human genome? Not really? You are not alone. Humanity may have been excited by the prospects, but outside of the medical and scientific community, it was difficult to assess what applications the scientific breakthrough would produce.
Twenty years later, the mapping of the genetic sequence is what enables the rapid development of Covid-19 battling vaccines. It’s that development that can ease the fears that the approval process was “too fast” as many have claimed. Most of the vaccines that are distributed now were developed prior to the year 2000. Since there was no critical urgency regarding vaccines developed later, their development was stretched out over a long period of time. Now, all the stars have aligned an urgent global problem, science that had made all the required advancements and the allocation of nearly limitless resources.