The Human Genome Project: Where Will It Take Us?
This information is from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) Hereditary Hearing Impairment Resource Registry (HHIRR). Although it was known for centuries that certain traits or diseases are passed on within families; an amazing number of the mysteries of heredity have been unraveled only in the last quarter of this century. We now examine the number and the structure of chromosomes under the microscope; identify carriers of some recessive disorders before they have affected children; diagnose some diseases by DNA testing before there are any symptoms; and even a few human gene products such as growth hormone and insulin are being produced in commercial laboratories. However, for all the progress that has been made, little or nothing can be done for most of the human suffering from genetic diseases. Almost 5,000 genetic traits or diseases have been described (not a small feat by itself), but the majority of responsible genes have not been identif
