Initiated in 1990, the Human Genome Project was an ambitious international scientific undertaking to read out all 3 billion letters of the human DNA instruction book. The project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget in April 2003. Building on this foundation, the field of genomic medicine is now coming into its own. Accelerating discoveries are being made about hereditary factors that contribute to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and mental illness, and increasingly sophisticated views of how life works at the molecular level are being derived.There are numerous practical consequences of this revolution, and some are arriving rather quickly. In the medical arena, prediction of individual susceptibility to future illness will be moving from science fiction to reality within the next 5 to 6 years. The science of pharmacogenomics, which allows prediction of which drug will work for which person, is also advancing rapidly and will soon become the standard of care for same classes of drugs. The molecular understanding of disease has also transformed the pharmaceutical industry, and one can anticipate an increasing number of new drugs whose derivation depended upon a precise genomic understanding of disease. This is already happening in the field of cancer with drugs like Avastin and Gleevec showing great benefit in certain types of malignancy.Despite these exciting developments, many are concerned about the possible misuse of these techonologies. On the list of concerns would be genetic discrimination, unequal access to genetic technologies, attempts to use genetics to attribute biological significance to racial categories, and the possible use of genetic technologies for enhancement of ourselves or our children. While many of the scenarios portrayed in the popular press about these outcomes are unrealistic, it behooves society to become engaged in a broader debate about the proper limits of genetic science. Furthermore, the unfortunate current antagonism that exists between the scientific and the religious communities, spurred on by a sense that these communities adhere to incompatible world-views, represents a stumbling block to making progress. In some final comments, I will suggest that harmonization of the scientific and spiritual world-views is a desirable and achievable goal.