Did the human genome project really have a trillion dollar impact?

In his state of the union address this year, President Obama cited a study that estimated that taxpayers got a whopping $796 billion return from the $3.8 billion investment in sequencing the human genome. That larger than life number was laid out as an important reason to invest in basic science.

Now, an update to the report has been issued, finding the economic benefits of the governments investment in the field over a longer time frame, between 1988 and 2012, were even more vasta $1 trillion return.

The initial analysis raised some criticism and skepticism from economists due to issues with the methodology, and the new report seems destined to do the same.

How can they do this with a straight face? Julia Lane, an economist for the American Institutes for Research, said. If it was indeed a trillion dollar impact, then why are they doing anything except investing in the human genome project?

Lane said some of the calculations done in the new analysis are standard and reasonable. But what the report has also done, she said, is attribute every economic activity that has any association with the genome to the initial investment by the NIH.

The report was funded by United for Medical Research, an organization that represents research institutions, health advocates, and industry, and a contribution from Life Technologies Corp. Life Technologies is a company that makes genome sequencing technologies, and many of the groups represented by United for Medical Research have benefitted from the governments investment in the genome.

This report illustrates the vital role that key federal research funding plays in growing the U.S. economy, creating new industries and innovative technologies and producing diagnostics and treatments that can save lives, Carrie Wolinetz, president of United for Medical Research, said in a press release.

Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine who has been vocal about conflicts of interest in medicine, said in an interview that although he does not doubt that the human genome project has had major economic repercussions, he does not know what to make of the reports findings.

I would never be satisfied with something as sketchy as this; the point is this is not sufficient hard evidence on which to base any conclusion for me, Kassirer said.

In particular, he noted that one thing the report examined were the employment effects of the genome projectan area in which he noticed a kind of circular logic going on in counting up the economic benefits.

Excerpt from:
Did the human genome project really have a trillion dollar impact?