On losing your molecular privacy

Thanks to Dr. Lohr and the BMJ for discussing this important issue
and the potential future implications of the human genome project and
other similar research efforts creating a scenery more like Huxley's
"brave new world" rather than Orwell's "1984".

However, in contrast to previous centuries when scientists like Leonardo
da Vinci or even artists like Michelangelo, who were too curiously
studying human anatomy and were too far ahead of their time, were
suspected for doing magic and creating evil, this is the new millenium and
not the time for sustained witch-hunting. We all accept the benefit from
knowing anatomy and we will certainly appreciate the knowledge from
molecular biology in the not so far future. I remember similar discussions
when the new functional imaging modalities like functional magentic
resonance imaging (fMRI) were introduced and one could see for the first
time ones brain at work. Again, patients benefit from these modalities.

Finally, I want to add one tempting idea. There was a time in physics when
all seemed to be known, measurable and deterministic. Heisenberg needed to
come up with his famous uncertainty relation to leave some space for
creativity and randomness, which, in biology, we would like to call
evolution.