<< Despite Mike BGene's appeal to romanticism, the mapping of the HD in the
Eighties was inevitable. The idea that it could be mapped by a faster, if
more haphazard, method was already circulating when Wexler decided to pursue
the issue. Had she never become involved, someone in some other lab would
have decided to look into the matter (probably more than one persons in more
than one labs) because it was so inticing an idea, and the HD gene would
still have been mapped by the end of the Eighties. The accomplishment "was
in the air"; all that was needed was someone to grasp the opportunity and
Wexler just happened to be lucky enough to grasp it first.>>
Desipte Kevin's appeal to fatalism, there is no evidence that the
HD gene would have been mapped by the end of the 80s had Wexler
not existed. Kevin keeps insisting that Wexler became aware of
some argument that the gene could be mapped much quicker, but
the approach she used was the very one labelled as "crazy" by many
experts in genetics. To understand the importance of Wexler's
role, see my message "The Human Face of Science."
Mike