What are the disadvantages from the genome project?

Answer 1

The biggest disadvantage is that the mapping is carried out on a few individual's genome, and is not representative of all humans. It doesn't answer questions about where the coding of a gene starts and ends, nor does it answer questions about regulation of that gene. Genetic diseases in the volunteers were not identified, and may certainly be a poor representation of human population simply from sampling error - essentially those few individuals whose genes are being studied now represent the ideal human merely because their genetics are now known but are not revealed.

Eventually the discrepancies between the volunteers and actual representations about human genetics will be addressed, as will more critical information about the genes and regulation. But I am coming from it with a researchers view. The last link lists:

" * the cost - the money could be spent elsewhere,

* the anguish resulting from knowing that a person has an untreatable genetic disease,

* the use or misuse of genetic information by such organisations as insurance companies and employers,

* the ownership of genetic test results,

* the patenting of human genes and DNA,

* the increasing gap between rich and poor countries in the quality of life and the level of health and disease treatment,

* the exploitation of isolated populations in the search for disease genes,

* the ethics of accumulating genotypic profiles of people - are they able to be used for anything that the researcher wants,

* decisions about the ownership of data by 'affected' or donor individuals,

* the ethics of germline gene therapy,

* the ethics of somatic gene therapy,

* the costs of genetic treatment versus benefit to the community. " But I feel most of that is not directly related to the Human Genome Project but how the information is used, and most of it is a long ways off right now. Identifying individual genes and pathologies takes many years to work on and is not a direct process. Also, according to the previous answer, world domination.

I stole this answer from Yahoo answers by the way.