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IJE Advance Access originally published online on March 15, 2006
International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(3):578-581; doi:10.1093/ije/dyl006
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2006; all rights reserved.

Commentary

Commentary: The Human Genome: philosopher's stone or magic wand?

Robert C Millikan

Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. E-mail: bob_millikan@unc.edu

Accepted 20 September 2005

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The commentary by Buchanan et al.1 in this issue provides a candid assessment of our progress in the search for genetic determinants of complex diseases. Geneticists, physicians, and especially epidemiologists should take note. In the authors' evaluation, human genome research has been disappointing, yielding few results with a positive impact on public health. Are the authors correct in their assessment? We need to critically evaluate the points raised by Buchanan et al.1 and consider the practical suggestions that they offer.

One useful framework for exploring the themes presented by Buchanan et al.1 would be to identify two separate goals (among many others) for research in human genomics. First, there is the search for genetic causes of complex diseases. This immense effort serves as the flagship project for discovery science, an exciting and ever-expanding research programme ‘in which one generates large resources of information on biologic molecules in . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Discovering genetic risk factors in populations
 

   Developing clinical applications for individual patients
 

   Where do we go from here?
 

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