The New York Times article on the announcement of the completed map of the human genome (which isn’t really complete) provides a useful historical perspective on the rivalry between Celera, a private company, and the publicly funded Human Genome Project. Everyone talks about Celera trouncing the HGP in the gene race, but Celera couldn’t have finished without borrowing lots of data from the HGP. On the other hand, the HGP wouldn’t be halfway finished if not for Celera’s lighting a fire under them.