Human Genome Project proves: Innovation pays off
14.07.13
Science helps patients by driving the development of new and improved medicines. For this reason alone, science is a worthy investment. But investing in science pays off in other ways, as I’ve noted many times before. Proof of this was again seen in a new report revealing that the $14.5 billion invested by the US Government in the Human Genome Project has seen a 60-fold return in investment. The report, from United for Medical Research and Battelle, made headlines this week with its estimate that the boost the project gave in terms of new jobs, drugs, and expanding industry, resulted in a positive economic impact of $966 billion. These new numbers drive home just how valuable research can be not only for patients but also for the societies they live in.
“So besides thinking through how we’re going to get the human genome sequence, those of us who lead the effort have to spend a large fraction of our time talking to the public explaining why we’re doing it and why we think we’re the good guys and not the bad guys” – a statement by James Watson in 1990, the same year the US Government put its Human Genome project into effect. As Head of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, Watson was directly involved in the project’s early days, and was called upon to defend it. By now, the value of mapping the human genome is amply evident: It has furthered researchers’ abilities to develop new diagnostic tests and develop medicines linked to genetic variation.
Scientific advancement may have been the primary motivation for the Human Genome Project but its added economic value of the project has long been acknowledged. This was again recently highlighted by US President Barack Obama, when he unveiled another major research initiative on the part of the US Government, the BRAIN initiative. Obama was right to highlight this success story: Investment in research and innovation often needs to be defended, especially in tough economic time.
The need to protect such investment is a topic I highlight often- because it needs to be said. Funding for programmes supporting innovation and research, like Horizon 2020, has already come under threat and will continue until we are out of this crisis. Evidence of the positive returns from research is essential to ensuring continued investment that will benefit us in the future. Now is not the time to get complacent or to tighten purse strings, but to push forward and invest in research and innovation – and trust that this investment will more than pay off in the future. The odds, as we’ve already seen, are on our side.
