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Robert J. Yaes, ScD, MD
University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center Lexington

JAMA. 1990;264(22):2866-2867.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Drs Watson and Cook-Deegan¹ argue cogently for proceeding with the Human Genome Project, but they have presented only one side of the story. In an ideal world in which resources would be infinite, this certainly would be a project worth pursuing, but in the real world, a project costing several billion dollars must be weighed against the other uses to which these funds could be put.

At present, some study sections of the National Institutes of Health have money to fund only 15% or 20% of the research proposals deemed worthy of support. The cost of rejecting up to 85% of the submitted research proposals must be measured not only in terms of research not performed and results not obtained but also in terms of discouraged young investigators who will leave the field of biomedical research entirely.

The Human Genome Project is certainly an interesting intellectual . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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