A new science?

On 14 March 2000, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, issued a joint statement in which they applauded ‘the decision of scientists working on the Human Genome Project to release raw fundamental information about the human DNA sequence and its variants rapidly into the public domain’. The two leaders concluded by urging researchers around the world to adopt this policy of rapid publication (Danchin, 2000). The next day, shares in Celera Genomics Inc. – a private company so active in the field of human gene mapping as to become a serious competitor against the public consortium of research institutes – fell sharply together with those of numerous biotechnological companies, and with them the Nasdaq technological stock index. On 6 April 2000, Celera announced completion of the entire genomic sequence of a single male individual. The announcement received blanket coverage by the news media and Celera shares rose by 40 per cent in a few hours. The public consortium responded by announcing the detailed sequencing of three human chromosomes roughly corresponding to 11 per cent of the overall human genome.