Human Diversity, Genes, and Medicine - Brutes or Angels: Human Possibility in the Age of Biotechnology - page 139

from disease. Detailed discussions of scientific and ethical aspects of the
hapmap Project are at the nih's national human Genome research in-
stitute website. 5
The Human Genome Diversity Project and the “1000 Genomes Project”
The human Genome Diversity Project (hGDP) is organizationally un-
related to either the hGP or the hapmap Project. initiated in the 1990s,
the hGDP aimed to examine the less than 1 percent of the genome that
differs from individual to individual in order to gain information about (1)
the origins of individual “racial” groups, (2) the genetic bases for human
traits and how they relate to racial and small, native populations, and (3)
the genetic causes for “race”-based vulnerabilities to certain diseases. The
hGDP described its target populations in geographical, ethnic, and lin-
guistic terms. DnA samples were obtained from a preexisting bank of cell
lines collected from worldwide donors and maintained at a french insti-
tute for human-population genetic studies.
The project was severely criticized for using socially constructed cate-
gories to guide its DnA sampling. Concerns were also raised that the data
could be used to exploit or harm indigenous populations (south and meso
American indian rights Center 1995). Although the hGDP no longer op-
erates as the original international consortium, data gathered from 927 in-
dividuals from ifty-two populations was published in 2006 (Conrad et al.
2006). overall, the hGDP data confirmed the medical usefulness of haplo-
type maps obtained by the less controversial hapmap Project that sampled
Homo sapien DnA based on geographical ancestral home.
in 2008 a new project to examine the genetic diversity in Homo sapi-
ens was initiated, The 1000 Genomes Project. The goal of the project is to
identify the genetic variants that occur at a frequency of 1 percent or higher
in our species. By project's end, DnA samples from twenty-ive hundred
individuals from twenty-eight different populations, representing five of
the world's major human ancestral regions (europe, east Asia, south Asia,
West Africa, and the Americas), will have been sequenced. scientists and
genomic research institutes in the United Kingdom, United states, and