No human endeavour is spontaneously more international than science, but few activities are more awkward when they consciously try to be international. Geneticists encounter this paradox in four areas that transcend regional interests: nomenclature, a genome database, the legal and ethical issues raised by genetics and the infrastructure for international congresses and standing committees. They are interrelated, and perhaps painful trial and error will lead to a common solution.
Most sciences classify large numbers of objects by rules that can be applied successfully by any practitioner. The original name is conserved unless it violates a rule, and then the synonymy is clearly documented. Therefore, the role of an international nomenclature committee is primarily legislative rather than judicial. The International Standing Committee on Human Cytogenetic Nomenclature is responsible for extending the classical system to accommodate new techniques and data, so that the most complex observations can be communicated unambiguously1. Without a standing committee, Drosophila genetics has so far followed this principle, with the result that names assigned decades ago are easily traceable. Taxonomy is even more stable, giving transparent continuity from Linnaeus to the present. In contrast, the Plains Indians changed names to reflect events, and so Laughing Boy might become Sitting Bull. Human genetics follows this precedent, and we are fortunate if we can trace last year's name. Does our science really benefit when the locus controlling the JK blood groups is renamed SLC14A1, which signifies 'solute carrier family 14, member 1' of an otherwise empty set not recognized in other organisms or by UniGene? Why is the gene encoding dystrophin symbolized DMD for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but scores of other disease symbols have been supplanted? With the greatest respect for the devotion of the two chairpersons of the HUGO committee, how can a nomenclature with ambiguous rules not be capricious? Serial replacement of a familiar symbol by one that more closely reflects evolving information about function requires enormous effort when the database has a few thousand loci, and must collapse before all 100,000 expressed loci are entered. Standardization of names for expressed loci over organisms with different nomenclature conventions raises serious problems of communication among specialties, priority, degree of homology, duplication and change of function, and should not be attempted until nomenclature is coherent within organisms. Meanwhile, no effort has been made to standardize names of non-expressed sequences and clones, which are much more numerous than expressed loci. Informaticians throw up their hands and use accession numbers that vary from one database to the next, adding to the synonyms generated by inconsistent use of D numbers, underlines, hyphens, upper and lower case and abbreviations. Every geneticist who has spent hours searching for a recent symbol, now replaced by a synonym with no traceback, must envy the sciences where such unnecessary labour is recognized as not only useless but prohibitively costly. What geneticist does not address the Nomenclature Committee in the spirit and nearly the words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Linnaeus, think it possible you may be mistaken."
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