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Article: Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene.
- Article from:
- The Washington Monthly
- Article date:
- April 1, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Washington Monthly Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene. Stephen S. Hall. Atlantic Monthly Press, $19.95. Every year authorities make predictions that turn out to be wrong, forecasting shortages of some commodity--oil, hospital beds, American-born field goal kickers--that correct themselves. People forget about the prediction, the experts move on to some new crisis, and nothing much comes of it.
In one instance, however, there were lasting and remarkable consequences from a mistaken forecast made by a consensus of experts in the mid-1970s: the world's diabetic population, they said, would soon face a shortage of insulin. The prediction was so dramatic it ...