The great DNA letdown

    It's possible that the obsession with DNA actually hindered or slowed the study and development of other approaches to understanding and treating disease. If nothing else, it diverted resources to companies and efforts that are now almost all gone — bankrupt, sold, or redirected away from pure genomics.

    This distraction may explain why the number of novel drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration dropped from a peak of 53 in 1996 to 25 last year. (The good news is that this is up from only 11 novel drugs approved in 2005.)

    The genetics craze also created the impression that dozens of DNA markers associated with common diseases can be used to predict one's risk of acquiring that disease. In some cases this is true — for instance, for some cancers and for macular degeneration, a disease that causes blindness.

    Most of the genetic tests offered by online companies, such as 23andme and deCodeme, however, have not been scientifically validated. Even if they have, they usually reveal only a slightly elevated risk factor for disease. This may explain why only 35,000 customers have signed up for 23andme — a company that has received lavish attention since launching in 2007. In 2008, Time magazine named 23andme, and personalized genomics, the innovation of the year.

    All is not lost, says human genome project leader Francis Collins, now the Director of the National Institutes of Health. "The promise of a revolution in human health remains quite real," he writes in a Nature commentary. "Those who somehow expected dramatic results overnight may be disappointed, but should remember that genomics obeys the First Law of Technology: we invariably overestimate the short-term impacts of new technologies and underestimate their longer-term effects."

    This is why the editors at Nature intriguingly have suggested that perhaps another coordinated Big Science effort like the Human Genome Project is needed to bridge what is fast becoming a huge gap between the valuable research being produced in the wake of the Human Genome Project and its application in health and medicine.

    "The ten years since have brought astounding technological and intellectual advances," write the Nature editors. "But ten years from now, when the story of the genome's first two decades is being told, it should include equally astounding applications to human health."

    This leaves us fans eagerly awaiting the next chapter in the biopic of the Fab Four — the one where they venture out and embrace the rest of the world, to make the music of cures — that will truly be for the ages.