Back in 2000, after the Human Genome Project’s leaders announced that a working draft of the human genome had been completed, GEN kicked off its coverage of the event by quoting from a New Yorker cartoon. “Whatever will we think about,” one cartoon figure asked another, “now that the genome project is almost complete?” Now, 20 years later, the quote seems more apposite than ever. With exquisite slyness, it suggests that we need to be careful about the word “complete.” It even leaves us thinking that what we call complete is really a beginning.
