Who Owns Our Genes?

One of the most powerful human impulses is curiosity; it has driven the great historical voyages of discovery and is behind the fundamental questions asked by science. This program will examine a controversial research project and the cultural conflicts surrounding it. In 1991 Professor Luca Cavalli-Sforza conceived the idea of a project which might reveal the grand sweep of human migrations around the world and illuminate the diversity of the human race. Cavalli-Sforza's plan, called the Human Genome Diversity Project, is to look at the genes of hundreds of these ethnic groups where the genetic pool has remained relatively undiluted. In this way it should be possible to discover how and when the branches of the family tree were formed. But the project has run into resistance from some ethnic groups and has even been labelled Project Vampire' by its most virulent critics. Are their criticisms well formed or is the HGDP being blamed for the research sins of others?