1. Sidebar Early on, some Human Genome Project researchers insisted that only a single person needed to be sequenced as a template for all others

2. Question: With respect to this idea, where do you stand? A. Strongly agree B. Agree C. Not sure D. Disagree E. Strongly disagree

3. Some Context Humans share over 99% of their genes in common All people are pretty much the same Avoids the bug-a-boo of race seen in Eugenics movements Dr. Robert Swartz (Tufts University), “Race is a social construct not a scientific classification.”

4. More Context Humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees and almost two-thirds of our genes with drosophila fruit flies

5. Even More Context Dr. M. Anne Spence, University of California, Irvine; on HGP’s ethics committee Reported that there was a widely shared feeling that gender ought not to matter and should be ignored in initial sequencing Most drug research carried out on white, middle- aged men People, especially women, often have radically different responses to the same medicines

6. Question: With respect to this idea, where do you stand now? A. Strongly agree B. Agree C. Not sure D. Disagree E. Strongly disagree

7. The Devil’s in the Details Yes, humans are very similar to each other (99%) Highly significant small differences, though Dr. Neil Risch (Lamond Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute for Human Genetics at University of California, San Francisco): “What we are going to find is precisely that the other percent plays a role in determining why one person gets schizophrenia or diabetes while another doesn’t, why one person responds well to a drug while another can’t tolerate it.”