The Revolution in Genetics: Where will biotechnology lead?

Scientists around the world are on the point of completing a first draft sequence of the entire human genome - a three-billion-letter coded message written in the four bases which constitute the 'alphabet' of all life on earth. The implications for medicine and agriculture are enormous, and naturally attract massive and high-risk commercial investment.

But reading the alphabet is far from understanding the language, and it becomes daily clearer that, if the alphabet is simple, life is not. A one-to-one relationship between a gene and a disease, or a gene and a better strain of crop, is a rarity. Most relationships are unimaginably complex. In this briefing we try to explore and explain, without hype, the many serious hopes and concerns raised by the new technology.

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