In the 17th century William Harvey’s medical contemporaries dismissed his discovery of the circulation of the blood as being of no diagnostic or therapeutic importance. Indeed, it was not till the advent of cardiac surgery nearly 300 years later that the knowledge that “blood is driven into a round by a circular motion” would find practical application.

Given this, and other similar historical precedents, it seems unwise to argue that modern genetics is a blind alley—not least because it might more readily be described as a four lane highway.

Since the discovery of the revolutionary techniques of gene sequencing in the late 1970s, modern genetics—together with neuroscience—has come to dominate the biomedical research agenda. Funding has doubled and doubled again in the recent past, reaching around $100bn (£65bn; €74bn) worldwide.1 This endeavour is immensely productive, generating billions of …