Here’s my favorite recent headline, topping an October 18 piece in Slate by Arthur Allen:

The Disappointment Gene: Why genetics is so far a boondoggle.

Huh? Just to be sure that I wasn’t misinterpreting, I consulted a dictionary, which defines the word ‘boondoggle’ as “unnecessary, wasteful, and often counterproductive work”. Well, that sounds pretty bad. What are we to make of it? To begin with, I suppose we have to assume that the headline-writer is referring specifically to twenty-first century genetics, rather than to a big-spending classical geneticist like, say, T.H. Morgan (how many drugs did he develop?) No, it must be the age of genomics that is a major disappointment. And if that’s the case, then surely it’s worth reminding everyone that the ink on the HapMap publication is barely dry, and that there are several human chromosomes whose finished sequence has not yet been published. But after reading Allen’s full piece, I realized that the headline, which bears little relation to what comes after, is meant to convey much more than the author intends. For the article is a good one. It takes aim at some of the ‘nutrigenetics’ companies that aim to turn a profit by peddling the most obvious advice imaginable. It reminds readers of the complex relationship between genotype and phenotype, made even more complex by recent discoveries of non-coding transcripts and regulatory RNAs. It explains to readers how the usefulness of the HapMap depends to a great extent on the assumption that there are common variants underlying common disease. In other words, science as we know and love it. All good stuff. So why the sense of doom?

Perhaps part of an answer can be found in a somewhat similar piece by Sharon Begley in the Wall Street Journal (freely available here in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Begley’s piece, entitled “Nature’s quirks limit DNA-based drug possibilities” describes recent findings where gene-based drug discovery has come up short. The first is the disappointing lack of efficacy of an inhibitor of B-Raf in treating melanoma. She follows with other examples of gene-based interventions that turn out to much less precise (and effective) than one would have hoped. Vipin Garg, CEO of Tranzyme Pharma, is quoted as saying “The gap between understanding the genetics of a disease and drug development is actually growing”.

But surely that gap has always been the same; it’s an appreciation of the scope of our own ignorance that’s been growing. That’s a good thing, which genetics has been partly responsible for. By all means, let’s expose the hype. But at the same time, let’s acknowledge that the only way to conquer all of this complexity is to understand it. And if B-Raf is not the Achilles’ heel of melanoma, then it seems likely that it will be among the best available entry points into finding out what is.

In any case, if you were wondering how soon it will be before there’s a backlash if Big Pharma’s pipeline doesn’t fill up with genomically inspired drugs, the answer may be: sooner than you think.