genomic waste

One can understand that laymen may have a hard time understanding evolution and its implications. Especially in a country like America, where evolution is often treated as a philosophical idea akin to religion, instead of the scientific notion it really is.

Evolution is not palatable to the common folk. They already feel intimidated by all the smarts around them. The last they want to hear is that they are descended from monkeys, with the obvious implication that they are closer to those monkeys than the smart ones, who must -by definition- be more evolved. All of this is hogwash of course, but try to explain that to the press.

However when a bunch of geneticists start wasting money because they don't understand the implications of natural selection, one has to wonder. That is precisely what happened when the HapMap project was announced. One could argue the scientists can be forgiven for there are many forces here to cloud the picture.

First, there was the enormous inventory of sequencing and PCR machines that now stood idle. Second there were the government bureaucrats, who felt somewhat disappointed when the much ballyhooed genome project failed to deliver all the medicines and therapies they had promised to their sponsors. Third there were the very people who drove much the project, many of whom were mathematicians and physicists, who never sat down and thought about evolution. And finally, there was the master of them all, the kumba-ya singing apostle of fundamentalism and science, who was appointed the high priest of the project.

But face it, HapMap was and is a glorious failure. Even more so than the genome project itself. That project had at least one redeeming factor: a lot of technology was developed that has other uses. Much like the velcro and the space project one could say.

HapMap was based on the mistaken assumption that common diseases would be caused by common gene mutations and that these would be relatively easy to find if one applied enough genotyping and sequencing volume. Enough brute force, it was truly an American idea.

Nobody ever thought that maybe, just maybe, natural selection would have weeded out these common errors before they could become common. That simple notion, the first one that is taught students when they learn about biology, escaped the great minds of the genome.

Now hundreds of millions of dollars later, they are finally coming face to face with reality. They are finally realizing the old saying, "garbage in, garbage out."

People can ignore evolution if they choose to do so. They can ignore gravity too. But when they do, it will cost them dearly. Such is the nature of reality. It is a bit different from religion.