The fabled Human Genome Project—the $3.8-billion international mapping effort led by the United States that ran from 1988 to 2003—was one of the last "big government" research projects, although the internet, originally a small, DARPA project, was quietly gaining momentum in the background. The ambitiously stated HGP goal, "to understand the human genome," felt t oskeptics a little too Star-Treky, representing the rump-end of Kenndy-Johnson-era big government idealism. I don't even want to talk about the loss caused by the long-aborted Texas Super Collider.
