Interviewee: Francis Collins. Francis Collins, the second director of the Human Genome Project, tells of his excitement about the project. (DNAi Location: Genome > The project > Players > Pros & Cons >From ignorance into knowledge)

Well when the Human Genome Project was first being discussed, I think there were those who were skeptical about whether it could be done. Others were skeptical about how much it was going to cost and whether it would take too much money away from other things. Others argued that it was going to be so tedious that only mediocre scientists would be interested in being involved. I didn't share any of those views, it always seemed to me from the very first moment where this was beginning to be at least somewhat seriously discussed, that this had to be the most exciting momentous kind of science that humankind could have contemplated up until this point. Reading our own instruction book, it is momentous in the sense that you only do it once, if you do it right that is, once it's done it's done and it will basically allow you to cross a bridge that you will never go back across in the future: from ignorance into knowledge.

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