In the Museum of Science and Technology in San Jose, California, there is a display dedicated to advances in biotechnology. Most prominent in the display is a double helix of telephone books stacked in two staggered spirals from the floor to the ceiling twenty five feet above. The books are said to present the current state of our knowledge or the eurcaryotic genome: the primary sequences of DNA polynucleotides for the gene products which have been discovered so far in the twenty years since cloning and sequencing the genome became possible.

In order to grasp what is problematical about the human genome project (HGP), I want you to hold on to this image of a stack of phone books, or rather two stacks, helictical in shape. Imagine that each of the phone books about the size of the Manhattan white pages, and that the two stacks of phone books reach up a mile and a half into the sky.