Dr. Mary-Claire King

It is our concern who the child is.

And we must assume that the parents are dead, have been murdered.

So we need to be able to do that through the grandparents.

And ultimately, of course, within, I guess, probably what, a year or so, we were doing this through any maternal relative with mitochondrial sequencing.

But at the beginning, we were thinking in terms of having information on grandparents.

And of course, this was all before anybody was using DNA to do this.

So the most important questions come from people on the front lines.

Third thing is the most righteous projects demand the most rigorous science.

It would be one thing if I would get a map location wrong for this hypothetical gene for breast cancer.

It was something else if I got a child misidentified.

And the fourth thing, it's a little arrogant, but no question's too big to ask.

If I were a better experimentalist, I would be working on gene therapy.

You have to have fabulous hands to do that.

But if I had the hands of a surgeon, I would work on that area.

I'm not sure which

I would choose to work on.

Certainly, ophthalmology and otolaryngology are now the fields where gene therapy has been the most effective.

But it's going to increase quickly.

And this is all somatic gene therapy, of course.

Given my own skill set, I think I would work on understanding the genetic bases of severe mental disorders.