 I was at the DOE Department of Energy's biological and environmental research program, and over there they had started their human genome project in 1986. So I know quite a bit about it from all aspects. Ironically, of course, at the time I was managing the DOE piece of the U.S. Global Change Research Program with a focus on climate and climate change that was launched a year earlier as one of those national research initiatives under the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology. And the irony I was referring to was that part of me was actually hoping that the combined human genome project would be delayed as a national initiative because I was concerned that the U.S. GCRP, the U.S. Global Change Research Program budget would be threatened by this new initiative that was launched that year. Little did I know of course that three years later I would be heading the whole DOE office or biological research program, and that by then I would be completely seduced by the promise and the potential of the human genome project.