The Truth About Ourselves
The human genome sequence has been completed and shows some surprising findings. Despite having one-third less genes than estimated, human beings are still very complex. With access to disease genes, medicine and diagnostics will be revolutionised. However, this will also raise ethical questions on cloning and genetic privacy.

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Profitable Loss
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COVER STORY: HUMAN GENOME

MEDICINE
Can we cure all diseases?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the era of designer drugs for most illnesses. No more will you employ a hammer to swat a fly. Doctors will soon have magic bullets that have the disease's name on it.

Speed. Accuracy. Efficiency. The power of prediction. These are some of the benefits the genome sequence promises medicine. Right now pharmaceutical companies are in most cases still unsure of precisely how drugs attack disease and affect cures. Knowing the minute changes in the disease genes will allow scientists to design precisely corrected versions. "Most drugs now work just vaguely. With the genome project there's is a tremendous potential for precisely targeted drugs," says Janet Bainbridge, a leading British protein biologist.

Diseases are often "spelling mistakes" in a normal gene. The Human Genome Project provides scientists with an instant spell-check and also equips them with tools to correct the defect. "It will benefit all aspects of medicine and biology and indeed the pharmaceutical industry," says Dr Clive Dix, vice-president, (R&D) GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). To understand the difference this makes, geneticists took seven years to detect the cystic fibrosis gene-the first "disease gene". Today it would take seconds on the computer database. Already the genome has helped detect more than 30 disease genes, including some for common diseases like breast cancer, colour blindness and epilepsy. "There will be a lot more emphasis now on preventive medicine," says geneticist Ravinder Kaul, a co-ordinator of the Genome Centre at the University of Washington, a collaborator in the international consortium led by Collins. He points out, "If from your genetic profile it's known at birth that you could have, say, a tendency to develop diabetes then you could adapt a suitable lifestyle right from the beginning to delay or avoid the disease."

The flip side though is that with fewer genes providing greater interactions, deciphering the intricate processes may take longer. Asthma, for instance, is not the product of a single gene but the result of small added effects of dozens of genes, further aggravated by environmental factors. To cure asthma one would need to study not only every gene involved but the many combinations by which they interact. Says Dix: "This is just the start and the message needs to be tempered and realistic."

The genome provides the infrastructure but the benefits will take at least five years to reach the masses. Nevertheless, pharmaceuticals like GSK have invested more than $4 billion to exploit the information from the human genome. And the quest for cost-effective cures by these companies will lead the genomic revolution in medicine.

MetroScape
Delhi On My Mind...
I'm very flattered to have this act of 'piracy' take place," laughs William Dalrymple, as extracts from his engrossing travelogue City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi were interpreted by photographer Agnes Montanari and art historian Nathalie Trouveroy in an exhibition.
more...

Looking Glass

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Delhi: Exhibition

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"I was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple, author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his "enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls in Interviews.