Dear friends,
Yes, this is a repaste. And no, I did not indicate that it is because then I thought many of you might not read it. This is history in the making!
Some day you will be able to say that you were alive at the time this happened, just the same way that my father told us how he saw the first automobile that ever came to his town, when automobiles were a brand new invention.
The same way that our son, who was five years old at the time, watched the landing of the man on the moon. I kept him home from school especially so he could watch it and when his teacher received my note of explanation the next day she was delighted that he had seen it "live."
The same way that David (Canuck) and I can say we saw the one of the first television sets in Canada, and it was a tiny one.
You will be able to say that you were there and heard the news, and that your country was one of the six who announced it when The Human Genome project was finally complete, and the work to eliminate genetic diseases began.
You will tell your grandchildren about how people used to get the same terrible, crippling, or killing diseases, that their ancestors died from, and their parents died from, and they would probably die from. Then you will tell them that these terrible diseases have been conquered. Your grandchildren won't have to be afraid they will die from them. They will not lose you to them, either, or their Mommy or Daddy. Won't that be a wonderful thing to tell your grandchildren?
I hope David won't mind me repasting this article, and will give it enough stars so that people will read it. Maybe you have already learned about it through your own news sources in China?
Best to you all. The sooner these diseases are conquered the better for all of us! It will not take long. Most of you are young. :-)))
Warm greetings, Mary *********
WASHINGTON APRIL 15. The book of genetic instructions for the human body is complete to an accuracy of 99.99 percent, a scientific achievement once deemed impossible, but now considered the foundation for a new era of medical advances, an international research team said.
With the entire sequence in hand and available to scientists worldwide, experts predicted it would lead to new drugs, better forecasts of people's health and new ways to treat or prevent many of the most devastating human illnesses.
A joint statement on Monday from the leaders of the six nations, including the U.S. President, George W. Bush, said the genetic map ``provides us with the fundamental platform for understanding ourselves from which revolutionary progress will be made in biomedical sciences and in the health and welfare of humankind.''
The other five countries involved are France, Britain, Germany, Japan and China.
The group, along with a competing private effort, completed a rough draft of the genome in 2000, but that draft included thousands of gaps in the long sequence of DNA base pairs.
Now, all but 400 of those gaps have been closed.
``After three billion years of evolution... we have before us the instructions set that carries each of us from a one-celled egg through adulthood to the grave,'' said Robert Waterston of the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium.
``It is written in an arcane language and encompasses a complexity that we are just beginning to understand.''
The genome is composed of about three billion pairs of DNA chemicals within 24 chromosomes. The genes that control the body's development, growth, functions and aging are made of specific sequences of these chemical pairs.
A small change in these sequences can be enough to cause disease.
By identifying the correct and healthy sequence of base pairs, researchers hope to be able to find the disease-causing genetic flaws that could lead to treatment. Scientists are still uncertain how many genes there are in the genome, but most believe it is about 30,000.
This number is expected to be refined with more research. Hundreds of scientists in the consortium, representing 18 organisations in six countries, started the sequencing work in 1990.
American agencies and universities, led by the National Human Genome Research Institute and the Department of Energy, completed the project at a cost of about $2.7 billions, some $300 millions less and two years earlier than the original estimate.
The U.S. did about half of the DNA sequencing, and some of the money budgeted for the human project was spent on sequencing other organisms, such as the mouse, and on associated technologies.
Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said complete sequence of the genome is just the beginning of the genetic revolution. Researchers now will use the sequences to try to speed identification of genes that cause cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other disorders and then to develop drugs that either prevent or treat the disorders. ?AP
