In 2003 it was a sensation. No really – it’s probably true that in medicine only the first human heart transplant operation back in 1967 has generated as much publicity. That was in the pre-web dark age but, nevertheless, the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard was immortalized as a global hero: even the patient’s name was on everyone’s lips (Louis Washkansky if you’re struggling to recall) and you can re-live the whole event at the Groote Schuur Hospital museum in Capetown. But, although 2003 was just a decade ago, in today’s world sensations fade almost with the following dawn, whether they are pop groups or life-changing scientific advances.
So if now you mention “The Human Genome Project” to a man on the Clapham omnibus you are likely to elicit only a puzzled look. What happened in 2003 was of course that the genetic code – that is the sequence of bases in DNA – was revealed for the entire human genome. And an astonishing triumph it was, not least because, in contrast to almost everything else in history with a major British component, it was completed within schedule and under cost.
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Image: DNA Credit: MJ/TR (´･ω･) from Flickr
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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