As he envisioned it, the project, which Rotimi eventually named Human Heredity and Health in Africa, or H3Africa, would do far more than study African genomes:
項目最終命名為“非洲人類遺傳和衛生”,或稱之為“非洲H3”,正如羅蒂米所預想的,這個項目所研究的遠遠超出非洲基因組:
It would be a massive research effort led by African scientists, located in African institutions and directly benefiting the African population.
這個項目將包含大量研究工作,由非洲科學家領導、落實在非洲機構、直接造福非洲人民。
H3Africa would create parity between researchers there and in Europe and North America.
洲、歐洲及北美的研究人員之間建立平等關系。
A geneticist in Nigeria could compete with one at Harvard for funding—and win.
尼日利亞的遺傳學家可以與哈佛大學的遺傳學家競爭資金——并最終成功。
Such an approach would avoid the disheartening patterns of the past and instead directly benefit African communities.
此種做法將和過去令人失望灰心的模式不同,會直接有利于非洲社區。
In short, H3Africa would not just ensure that the genomics era landed squarely on the continent but that the kind of omission that characterized its early years would never happen again.
簡而言之,“非洲H3”項目不但能確保基因組學能早日在非洲大陸上落地生根,而且也不會再出現早期那種被忽略的情況。
The NIH and the Wellcome Trust, a private charity based in the U.K., agreed to fund H3Africa for two five-year cycles.
美國國立衛生研究院和英國惠康基金會同意為“非洲H3”提供兩個五年周期的資金。
With the first cycle of funding—$76 million—
第一個周期拿到了7600萬美元的基金,
H3Africa established 29 research centers across the continent, including in Sudan, Sierra Leone and Ghana—countries rarely associated with science before now.
“非洲H3”在非洲建立了29個研究中心,包括蘇丹、塞拉利昂和加納——以前很少有國家和科學聯系在一起。
A cervical cancer project is collecting genomes from 12,000 women in several countries to better understand the mutations that raise the risk of human papillomavirus triggering the malignancy.
一個宮緊癌項目正從數個國家12000位女性當中收集基因,以便更好地了解一種可增加人類乳頭瘤病毒引發惡性腫瘤風險的突變。
At South Africa's University of Witwatersrand, geneticist Christopher Mathew is studying a kind of esophageal cancer common in Africa but rare in North America, and therefore neglected by research.
在南非威特沃特斯蘭德大學,遺傳學家克里斯多夫·馬修正在研究一種食道癌,這種食道癌在非洲很常見但在北美很少見,因此一直被研究人員忽視。
"It's been very difficult to do anything like this in the past," he says,"given the weakness of our local currency."
“在過去要做此事非常困難,”他說,“考慮到我們當地貨幣的疲軟?!?/div>
The 10 years of funding will total nearly $190 million.
這10年的資金總額將接近1.9億美元。
But the vision of a genetics project free from ethical dilemmas has not proved easy to achieve.
但是,一個沒有道德困境的遺傳學項目的愿景并不是那么容易實現的。
Using money from non-African countries to fund research and the permitted inclusion of non-African collaborators in H3Africa-funded projects raises several concerns.
在“非洲H3”資助的項目中,使用非非洲國家資金資助研究、允許非非洲合作者加入,引起了一些憂慮。
"Some ethics committees in Africa,"says Jantina de Vries, a bioethicist at the University of Cape Town,"seem to believe that international collaboration is always exploitive."
開普敦大學生物倫理學家珍蒂娜·德·弗里斯表示,“某些非洲倫理委員會似乎認為國際合作總是具有剝削性的。”
For decades, experts from the U.S. and Europe have come to Africa, taken what they needed and left, a practice aptly nicknamed helicopter science.
幾十年來,來自美國和歐洲的專家來到非洲,拿到所需就離開,這正是一種稱為“直升機科學”的實踐。
About 10 years ago, for example, an international group of geneticists took DNA samples from the eldest members of four communities of San,
例如,約10年前,一組國際遺傳學家從非洲南部四個閃族人最年長的成員身上提取了DNA樣本。
hunter-gatherers in southern Africa with the oldest known lineages on Earth.
閃族人是狩獵采集部落,擁有地球上已知最古老的血統。
"That project really did come, take samples and leave," de Vries says. San leaders were furious that they weren't asked for permission, which they found disrespectful.
“那樣的項目真的來了,拿了樣品就離開了,”德·弗里斯說。閃族人對于這種不經許可的行為表示憤怒,他們覺得不受尊重。
African scientists often end up with little involvement in the work using biological samples that they helped obtain.
非洲的科學家們通常很少參與在他們幫助下獲得的生物樣本的工作。
African patients often can't afford the drugs created with the help of their blood, spit and tissue.
非洲患者也負擔不起在他們血液、唾液和組織協助下研究出的藥物。
That history has left many researchers and would-be study participants skittish about genetic research.
這樣的過往讓許多研究人員和潛在的研究參與者對基因研究感到不安。
They worry that Africa will become an entire continent like Henrietta Lacks, the African-American cervical cancer patient whose family never knew that her cells had been exploited by scientists and widely used in medicine.
他們擔心非洲會再次讓海瑞塔·拉克斯的事情上演,海瑞塔·拉克斯是一名非裔美國子宮頸癌患者,其家人從來都不知道她的細胞曾被科學家利用過,并被廣泛應用于醫學。
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來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/Article/201811/569450.shtml