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The Common Thread: Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome
John Sulston was director of the Sanger Centre in Cambridge from 1993 to 2000. There he led the British arm of the international team selected to map the entire human DNA sequence, a feat that was pulled off in record time by an extraordinary collaboration of scientists. Despite innumerable setbacks and challenges from outside competitors, the ultimate success of the project can be attributed in large part to John Sulston's own determination, passion and scientific excellence. In this personal account he takes us behind the scenes of one of the largest international scientific operations ever undertaken. He reveals the politics, controversy, ethics, personalities, setbacks and accomplishments that shaped the seven years of research. He is frank about the competition with Craig Venter and Celera Genomics, which threatened to undermine the international community's attempts to make the sequence freely available to everyone. He shares with us his excitement as the project unfolded. And as a pragmatist he reveals his hopes and concerns as to how the information unlocked by the Human Genome Project will affect people's lives in the future. This is at once a compelling history of this most exciting of scientific breakthroughs and also an impassioned call for ethical responsibility in scientific research. As the boundaries between science and big business increasingly blur, and researchers race to patent medical discoveries, the international community needs to find a common protocol for the protection of the wider human interest. The quest for profits must not be allowed to restrict research or unreasonably limit access to treatment. Sulston tells a story of our shared human heritage, offering hope for future research and a fresh outlook on our scientific understanding of ourselves.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
11 people are currently reading
307 people want to read
About the author
John Sulston
11 books4 followersSir John Edward Sulston FRS (born 27 March 1942) is a British biologist. He is a joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sydney Brenner and H. Robert Horvitz. As of 2012 he is Chair of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester.
Sulston was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and Pembroke College, Cambridge graduating in 1963 with an undergraduate degree in Organic Chemistry. He joined the department of chemistry in Cambridge, gained his Doctor of Philosophy for research in nucleotide chemistry, and devoted his scientific life to biological research, especially in the field of molecular biology.
After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies for a while, he returned to Cambridge to work with Sydney Brenner at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
Sulston played a central role in both the Caenorhabditis elegans worm and human genome sequencing projects. He had argued successfully for the sequencing of C. elegans to show that large-scale genome sequencing projects were feasible. As sequencing of the worm genome proceeded, the project to sequence the human genome began. At this point he was made director of the newly established Sanger Centre (named after Frederick Sanger and now the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute), located in Cambridgeshire, England.
Following completion of the 'working draft' of the human genome sequence in 2000, Sulston retired from his role as director at the Sanger Centre. In 2002 he won the Dan David Prize and the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award. Later, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sydney Brenner and H. Robert Horvitz, both of whom he had collaborated with at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), for their discoveries concerning 'genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death'. One of Sulston's most important contributions during his research years at the LMB was to elucidate the precise order in which cells in C. elegans divide. In fact, he and his team succeeded in tracing the nematode's entire embryonic cell lineage. Sulston is now a leading campaigner against the patenting of human genetic information.
Sulston is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association. In 2003 he was one of 21 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.
In 2001 Sulston was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Secrets of Life.
He also provided bail sureties for Julian Assange, according to Mark Stephens, Julian's solicitor. Having backed Julian Assange by pledging bail in December 2010, he lost the money in June 2012 when a judge ordered it to be forfeited, as Assange had sought to escape the jurisdiction of the English courts by entering the embassy of Ecuador.
He was awarded the Royal Society's Rutherford Memorial Lecture for 2013, which he delivered in New Zealand on the subject of population pressure.
Sulston was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and Pembroke College, Cambridge graduating in 1963 with an undergraduate degree in Organic Chemistry. He joined the department of chemistry in Cambridge, gained his Doctor of Philosophy for research in nucleotide chemistry, and devoted his scientific life to biological research, especially in the field of molecular biology.
After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies for a while, he returned to Cambridge to work with Sydney Brenner at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
Sulston played a central role in both the Caenorhabditis elegans worm and human genome sequencing projects. He had argued successfully for the sequencing of C. elegans to show that large-scale genome sequencing projects were feasible. As sequencing of the worm genome proceeded, the project to sequence the human genome began. At this point he was made director of the newly established Sanger Centre (named after Frederick Sanger and now the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute), located in Cambridgeshire, England.
Following completion of the 'working draft' of the human genome sequence in 2000, Sulston retired from his role as director at the Sanger Centre. In 2002 he won the Dan David Prize and the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award. Later, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sydney Brenner and H. Robert Horvitz, both of whom he had collaborated with at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), for their discoveries concerning 'genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death'. One of Sulston's most important contributions during his research years at the LMB was to elucidate the precise order in which cells in C. elegans divide. In fact, he and his team succeeded in tracing the nematode's entire embryonic cell lineage. Sulston is now a leading campaigner against the patenting of human genetic information.
Sulston is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association. In 2003 he was one of 21 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.
In 2001 Sulston was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Secrets of Life.
He also provided bail sureties for Julian Assange, according to Mark Stephens, Julian's solicitor. Having backed Julian Assange by pledging bail in December 2010, he lost the money in June 2012 when a judge ordered it to be forfeited, as Assange had sought to escape the jurisdiction of the English courts by entering the embassy of Ecuador.
He was awarded the Royal Society's Rutherford Memorial Lecture for 2013, which he delivered in New Zealand on the subject of population pressure.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 8, 2022
This book is more accessible by scientists and researchers than the general, non-scientifically educated members of the public. The author is a highly-decorated scientist and the writing is quite technical and complex, though I imagine that is due to the author's desire for accuracy.
The opening chapters are tough for someone without a decent grasp of basic genetics, I do not have that and so struggled in the early stages and ended up skipping the opening chapters and I understood the rest of the book well enough without them. These chapters could've been simplified or omitted.
It was around the 1/4 point that things kicked off with the history of the project, establishing the Sanger Centre, international cooperation and PR competition with private labs attempting to kill the public project. This is the value of the book--correcting the record and providing the facts on the funding, goals and ethics of genomic research.
The opening chapters are tough for someone without a decent grasp of basic genetics, I do not have that and so struggled in the early stages and ended up skipping the opening chapters and I understood the rest of the book well enough without them. These chapters could've been simplified or omitted.
It was around the 1/4 point that things kicked off with the history of the project, establishing the Sanger Centre, international cooperation and PR competition with private labs attempting to kill the public project. This is the value of the book--correcting the record and providing the facts on the funding, goals and ethics of genomic research.
October 2, 2013
This book started out slow for me, but when it got into the discussion of private vs. public and the ethics of scientific discovery, I was really intrigued. As someone who works in research, these issues were relevant and made me realize the delicate balances in many aspects of society.
June 22, 2022
‘i regret that nowadays we live in a world where we are materially richer but apparently nothing matters except next years bottom line’
August 11, 2011
The inside story of the genome project, complete with the political interfering from both British and US governments, as well as big business attempting to take ownership of DNA itself.
October 28, 2013
The book is interesting. It describes the sciencce and politics that led to the discovery of the human genome. It is written from the point of view of John Sulston, a Nobel Prize winner.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews