The committee that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine was kicking themselves, no doubt, when they learned that they had prematurely awarded this year's prize to the guy who invented in vitro fertilization. If only they had waited another few weeks, they could have given the appropriate recognition to the miracle of medicine announced on Sunday.
We are speaking, of course, about this week's announcement that "Godfather of Metal" Ozzy Osbourne has now had his full genome sequenced. Serious people at an otherwise serious organization are claiming, with a straight face, that this is something we should take seriously. Seriously.
The twitterverse has already burned through most of the good one-liners here:
- Why didn't they sequence Sharon to see why she puts up with him?
- Will we finally discover the genetic keys to surviving the ingestion of bat blood?
- Isn't Ozzy actually the second Price of Darkness to be sequenced? After all, Craig Venter went first. [credit]
It's easy to poke fun at stunt science and celebrity spectacles. Pointing out the absurdity that Ozzy now pens a health column for the Times of London is like shooting fish in a barrel. It all goes to prove that life can be stranger than satire.
Taking a step back from the humorous elements of the story, there are more than a few things to be concerned about here. The very idea that anything of any value can possibly be gleaned from studying this many variables in a population of one is an affront against the kind of thought and work it took to make whole-genome sequencing possible. In a genetic study with an N of 1, what can't you claim to show?
More subtly, perhaps, there's a more pernicious line of thinking at the heart of the matter. Ozzy's genome may, indeed, show some unique and remarkable differences from the handfull of other genomes we've sequenced. It's a pretty big (and dangerous) leap, however, to immediately associate these differences with the most pronounced differences in how Ozzy has lived his life. By doing so, we risk making the same essential error made by phrenology.
Yes, Ozzy has taken a prodigious quantity of illicit drugs. He has demonstrated what many would consider anti-social behavior. The fact that these characteristics are vivid, however, does not make them biologically influenced. Social deviance is a notoriously difficult thing to measure with any precision. Our fascination with applying biology to social constructs is largely a bias to be overcome, not an urge to be indulged.
Whole genome sequencing may hold the keys to untold insight into the human condition. Sequencing Ozzy may just be the kind of stunt that's necessary to get the whole thing enough momentum to gather data on statistically useful populations. But it may be a case of "one step forward and two steps back" if genome sequencing becomes just another instrument of celebrity vanity or easy moralism.
You can't paint all vendors with a single brush... but if whole genome sequencing really wants to be taken seriously, it must show that it takes itself seriously. Ozzy isn't going to help that cause.
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