Goldfish Learn To Drive

SAEY: 
We’re almost out of time. It’s been wonderful talking 
with you. Did we miss anything?
GREEN:
We missed all sorts of wonderful things, but you can 
only spend so much time walking down memory lane.
What I would say in closing are two things people need to 
remember: First of all, how incredibly exciting this field is, and 
how incredibly eager we are to build our tent with more and 
more people from all different disciplines. And we also want 
people of all different populations and ancestral groups from 
all parts of the world. It’s going to be so important to do that.
The reason we want all these people involved is, we just 
touched on so many things that we still don’t understand. We 
need creativity. And we don’t have a playbook. Just like those 
days where we were bewildered of how we were going to get the 
Human Genome Project really done, I don’t really know how 
we’re going to get complete end-to-end understanding of the 
human genome. But I know if we get creative people working 
on it, we’ll make incredible progress. 
s
Explore more
s
Eric D. Green 
et al
. “Strategic vision for improving
human health at the forefront of genomics.” 
Nature.
October 28, 2020.
s
“Building a diverse genomics workforce: an NHGRI action 
agenda.” January 2021. bit.ly/NHGRIdiverseworkforce
In 2013, protesters at the U.S. Supreme Court called for a ban on human gene patenting, questioning who should own a person’s genetic information.
Essential voices
To read three more perspectives on progress in genetics, 
visit www.sciencenews.org/century.
Geneticist Tshaka Cunningham 
says precision medicine 
will only meet its promise when vastly more Black and 
Latino people feel safe participating in genomics studies.