will be needed to process sequence information so that it is manageable by doctors, for example. They will need a method to derive an individualized priority list for each patient of the top 10 or so genetic variations likely to be important. Equally essential will be assessing the effects of widespread access to this technology on people. From its outset, the HGP established a $10-million-a-year program to study and address the ethical, legal and social issues that would be raised by human genome sequencing. Participants in the effort agreed to make all our data publicly available with unprecedented speed—within one week of discovery—and we rose to fend off attempts to commercialize human nature. Special care was also taken to protect the anonymity of the public genomes (the “human genome” we produced is a mosaic of several people’s chromosomes). But many of the really big questions remain, such as how to ensure privacy and fairness in the use of personal genetic information by scientists, insurers, employers, courts, schools, adoption agen