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Field Note Excerpt I: By Invitation Only
Harvard Medical School (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), May 10, 2016.
Anticipation was in the air. Old friends, new acquaintances, and profitable collaborations. “History is being made,” said one speaker after another. History and synthetic genomes.
I did not realize until sitting at the airport on my way to Boston that this was intended to be a “closed session.” The organizers asked participants not to contact any media outlets or tweet about the meeting:
"We intentionally did not invite the media, because we want everyone to speak freely and candidly without concerns about being misquoted or misinterpreted as the discussions evolve."
In response, synthetic biologist Drew Endy, tweeted:
“If you need secrecy to discuss your proposed research you are doing something wrong.”
Originally, the meeting was called the “Human Genome Project II” (HGP II), a successor to the first initiative that culminated in the early 2000s with a map of humanity’s genetic blueprint. But in response to criticism (source unknown), the HGP II organizers rebranded the current initiative “Human Genome Project-Write.” We were moving beyond...
