The Common Thread - Tapa blanda

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. The Common Thread 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. The Common Thread tells a story of our shared human heritage, offering hope for future research and a fresh outlook on our scientific understanding of ourselves.

John Sulston never meant to become involved in the three ring circus of the Human Genome Project. All he wanted was to read the genetic code of the nematode worm. He couldn't have imagined how the worm was going to lead him into one of the most momentous enterprises in modern science. The Common Thread is the inside story of the race to sequence human DNA in its entirety and to offer the world the secrets of life that lie within that sequence. It takes us behind the scenes of one of the largest international scientific operations ever undertaken to reveal the politics, personalities and controversy that shaped seven groundbreaking years of research. Compelling and impassioned, this is not only the story of the most exciting scientific breakthrough in decades, it also reveals the very significant ethical issues involved, in particular Sulston's own quest to ensure that the sequence was freely available and that profit must not be allowed to restrict research. Ultimately The Common Thread offers a unique view of our shared human heritage, offering hope for the future and a whole new way to understand ourselves through science.