OK, I admit that 90% of what comes out of Lisa’s mouth is complete tosh. But the claim for which she’s had the most stick is, ironically, the one thing that’s true, i.e. the one about the human genome project. I never cease to be amazed that even George Lamb and Davina have both frequently mocked her for it and seem never to have even heard of it. Do the producers never watch the news? It was massive headline news at the time, mainly due to the possibilities it opened for curing hitherto incurable diseases and the involvement of a number of British scientists. I mean, Christ, even I remember it and I know about as much about Science as Rachel does about Geography! And the aforementioned interviewers don’t help their case by constantly misquoting Lisa, saying she claimed her friend discovered DNA, when in fact she merely said that her friend was involved in discovering the human genome. Whether she was or not who can say? But it’s certainly feasible.
“Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project (HGP) was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. During the early years of the HGP, the Wellcome Trust (U.K.) became a major partner; additional contributions came from Japan, France, Germany, China, and others.
Project goals were to identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA, determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, store this information in databases, improve tools for data analysis, transfer related technologies to the private sector, and address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.”
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresource...ome/home.shtml
30-08-2008, 12:31 AM
Lisa v The Human Genome: The Truth At Last!
Linear Mode
