Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

As of last year scientists had mapped the whole of the human genome, that is, the complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded within the 23 chromosome pairs of cell nuclei. Since then we have known ourselves as a species in a more thorough way than we ever had before.   It was two years ago that the Human Genome Project completed work on the female human genome, Mapping the Y chromosome took a little longer, bringing the job into 2022.  This was, then, the conclusion of a 30 year long project. The HGP was founded in 1990. A thought.  Wasn't the whole genome mapping part of the never-ending War on Cancer? IIRC the idea was that a fullmap would let researchers identify the cell-level mutations linked to specific forms of cancer, rto design better medicines accordingly. Has it helped? Are any new medicines on shelves in  pharmacies (general or hospital pharmacies) as a consequence? Yes, there hasn't been much time since the project was completed....

Continuing the thought from yesterday ... my recent reading includes MALIGNANT GROWTH, a work by Alan Marcus, which is specifically devoted to the dark side of the "microbe hunting" paradigm in medical research. What happens if one diligently pursues the microbe that isn't there?  In 1887, a Dr Robert Morris wrote in POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, "It seems more than probable that all malignant growths belong to the infectious microbic diseases, and that by to-morrow we shall have the tiny causators."  That phrase, "malignant growth" as a synonym for cancer tumors, the defining characteristic of the disease, gave Marcus his title. The line also seems, more than any other datum, to have inspired his thesis: that from Morris' time until the First World War, scientists all over the world sought to understand and cure cancer by chasing a phantom, the non-existent cancer microbe. Further, Marcus contends that many of the institutional structures that we think...