| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Human Genome Project
3.33 pm
The Minister for Small Business and E-Commerce (Ms Patricia Hewitt): Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the human genome project.
This morning the Wellcome Trust and the Sanger centre in Cambridge announced, together with their international partners, that the initial stage of the work to map the human genome had been completed. The work, which has been carried out in 16 centres across the world, has led to 85 per cent. of the human genome being accurately deciphered. Work in hand and still to be finally checked will lead to 97 per cent. of the genome being read.
That is an enormous scientific achievement and represents the culmination of an international project which will be of benefit to all humanity. The project has been a co-operative venture from the start and I should like to pay tribute to the central role of the United States and the other countries--Japan, France, Germany and China--with which we have worked to achieve our goal.
The international collaborative nature of this work stems from co-operation which began in the 1980s between John Sulston, working at the MRC laboratory of molecular biology, and Robert Waterston from Washington university. They first produced an outline of the genome for a particular type of worm, called C elegans. But their ultimate goal was to sequence the worm's genome in its entirety. Their success proved that sequencing the human genome, while far more ambitious, would be possible in principle. However, with the techniques available in the 1980s, it would have taken more than 1,500 scientists an entire century to complete the work.
John Sulston was key to the plan to set up the Sanger centre in 1992 with funds from the Wellcome Trust. The centre is named after Fred Sanger, who received his second Nobel prize for his pioneering work on the sequencing of DNA. The centre has played an important role in the development of the new and faster sequencing technique, which has led to the completion of the work far earlier than originally foreseen.
I pay particular tribute to the wisdom and foresight of the Wellcome Trust in largely funding the work in this country. British science is very fortunate that it has been supported by the huge resources of the Wellcome Trust, and that those resources have been used to such good effect.
The structure of DNA was discovered in Cambridge in 1953 by Francis Crick and Jim Watson, by their fellow Nobel prize winner Maurice Wilkins, and by Rosalind Franklin, who tragically died in 1957, before the Nobel prize was awarded. At that time, no one would have believed that by 2000, almost the whole of the human genome would have been sequenced. It is fitting that almost 50 years later, scientists at Cambridge should again be involved.
We should not underestimate the magnitude of that achievement. There are 3 billion chemical building blocks or bases in the human genome, packaged into 23 pairs of chromosomes. The order of those bases forms the code of life, providing instructions for the genes that help to make each of us who we are, and give us our particular
characteristics. Our genes make us susceptible or resistant to certain diseases, and affect the way in which we react to different medicines.Now that we have the sequence information, we shall be able to identify why changes in the usual code can lead to the development of diseases. Ultimately we should have a better understanding of the causes of major killers such as cancer and heart disease, and be able to develop effective treatments for them. We also have the prospect of personalised medicine, which means that both the course of treatment and the drugs prescribed will be tailored to suit the individual's genetic make-up.
It is because of the enormous potential of the human genome for increasing our understanding of human disease that in March 2000, President Bill Clinton and the Prime Minister announced in a joint statement that they would like to see "unencumbered access" to the sequence data.
President Clinton and the Prime Minister held a video conference this afternoon. They agreed that the common property of the human genome should be used freely for the common good of the human race, but that the implementation should not be abused, as the Prime Minister has said, to make man his own creator or to invade individual privacy.
As we proceed to use the new knowledge that the structure of the genome offers us, it is inevitable that a range of social and ethical questions will arise. We need to be sensitive to those issues, and to the different views and values that individuals will hold, and we need to debate them openly. The Human Genetics Commission, which we have recently set up to advise us on strategic developments in human genetics, will have an important role in that process and will consult widely. It will also, as far as it can, look into the future and advise us of the important issues that may arise.
There will be a continued need for international co-operation. President Clinton and the Prime Minister also spoke about that today, and concluded that the United States of America, the United Kingdom and other Governments throughout the world will now need to work together to develop the ethical, moral and legal framework that will ensure that this scientific leap forward benefits the many not the few, and strengthens all societies.
The sequencing of the genome is the end of one journey, but it is also the start of another. The Government are committed to being involved in that new journey. In the last comprehensive spending review, we increased the budgets of the relevant research councils by £142 million over the period to 2002 for research into human genetics.
I believe that in years to come, people will look back on this day and see it as the key to humanity's understanding of itself. We congratulate all the scientists involved on their remarkable achievement, and wish them every future success in taking that exciting work forward.
Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton): I thank the Minister for making her statement available to me earlier this afternoon; it is one of those statements about which there is genuine cross-party delight. We all understand its importance and we join the Minister in congratulating the international collaboration on the work, and especially British scientists on their work over the decades. I have an appointment, which has been in my diary for some time, to visit the Sanger centre next Tuesday, and I am genuinely looking forward to that.
I should declare an interest--as many hon. Members will--in that I have honorary positions with the National Autistic Society and the Alzheimer's Disease Society. Others will have their own personal interests. We are overwhelmingly encouraged by the news, and I hope that the project will come to fruition. I join the Minister in stating clearly that we will need to issue a word of caution to the general public so that expectations raised by today's marvellous announcement will not lead people to think that there will be an immediate solution for many conditions. However, the speed of progress in the past couple of years has been first class, and welcome.
There is a challenge to Governments. Will the Minister outline how the Government see the question of the cost of some of the treatments and medications that are likely to come from the research? Some will be disproportionately high for the few when we see them in reality in a few years' time. How is that influencing the hon. Lady's thinking and that of the Government in terms of treatments being available across the board, when science such as this creates new opportunities, with attendant costs?
The Minister announced that the United States and the United Kingdom have today jointly said that they hope that there will be "unencumbered access" to sequence data. How will that be affected by the new global agreement on patent law to which the UK and the US--if not all EU countries--are signatories? How does the Minister see the future in terms of patenting in this context?
Ms Hewitt: I thank the hon. Lady for her response and her questions. I agree that it is immensely important not to give the public the impression that there will be immediate solutions and treatments for terrible illnesses as a result of today's announcement. The hon. Lady asked about the costs of new treatments that will be developed on the basis of the human genome analysis. We have recently announced a record level of new funding for the NHS, which will give us the basis for expanding the range of treatments available to individuals.
It is worth adding that we should not assume that all the new treatments that science will make available will necessarily be more expensive than those available now. Some may be cheaper, not least because they will be more effective and better targeted than those available now. Also, we have established the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness--[Hon. Members: "Excellence."] I am grateful for that correction. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence will evaluate the cost- effectiveness of different treatments.
On patent protection and the crucial issue of making human genome data freely available, we have clear rules in the UK--soon to be reinforced by the EU directive on biotechnology patents--that will ensure that basic gene sequence information will not be patented and will continue to be available to all researchers and scientists. Companies, of course, will seek patent protection for inventions of their own that are based upon that freely available genetic discovery. That is necessary if the new diagnostic tools and therapies are to be developed. I believe that we have the right regime here in the UK which is soon to be enforced across the EU.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |