YEAR IN REVIEW 2001: HEALTH-AND-DISEASE

Health and Disease There are very few years in which a single achievement in medicine overshadows all others. Such a year was 2000, however, and such an achievement was the sequencing of the entire human genome. At a June 26 White House ceremony marking the occasion, Francis Collins (see Biographies), who led the international, publicly funded Human Genome Project, said, "This is a milestone in biology unlike any other." J. Craig Venter, head of Celera Genomics, a private company that entered the genome race in 1998, looked ahead: "It's my belief that the basic knowledge that we are providing the world will have a profound impact on the human condition." Whether one considered the sequencing of the genome to be the end of a colossal project or the beginning of a new science of human beings, there was no question that it would revolutionize medicine. (See Life Sciences: Special Report.)