Francis Collins promised in the 1990s/2001 that within 10 years human genome sequencing would yield 'previously unimaginable insights' and 'rational strategies for minimizing and preventing the disease phenotypes altogether.'

The Weismann barrier (Weismann, 1883), the claim that germline cells are separated from the body such that bodily changes can never be communicated to the germline, is wrong: all body cells extrude tiny vesicles containing control molecules (RNAs, proteins) that cross the barrier and have been shown to affect the metabolism and physiology of germline cells.

DNA cannot self-replicate like a crystal (an idea tracing to Schrödinger's 1942 Dublin lectures): chemical base-pairing alone yields an error rate of about 1 in 10,000 base pairs, which across 3 billion base pairs would produce hundreds of thousands of errors per division; the living cell instead deploys a controlled army of cut-and-paste correction enzymes that lower the error rate to about 1 in 10 billion.

All four dogmas (central dogma as complete story, Weismann barrier, DNA self-replication, replicator-vehicle separation) are shown incorrect by the correct interpretation of molecular biological evidence, as published in a Nature article in February of this year.

Because DNA cannot self-replicate without the cell's repair machinery, the replicator cannot be represented as separate from its vehicle, which refutes the fundamental thesis of the selfish gene.

The central dogma of molecular biology (Crick, 1958), that information flows DNA→RNA→protein and cannot be reversed, is correct as a chemical sequence statement, but it does not prevent organisms from controlling their genomes — as shown when immune systems mutate only the antigen-grabbing region of immunoglobulin genes via chance changes, then select and proliferate the cells that successfully grab the pathogen and kill the rest.

DNA nucleotides are chemicals whose associations and dissociations are determined purely by binding energies (A binds T, G binds C) and have no choice, so describing genes as 'selfish' — metaphorically or literally — is incorrect because only organisms with the freedom to choose can be selfish or cooperative.

Standard biology has causation upside down: genes do not control organisms ('genes create us body and mind' per Dawkins); rather, organisms control and change their genes when needed.

The human genome is a thread of roughly three billion nucleotides (A, T, G, C), and every cell except red blood cells contains a complete set.

A baby is not born selfish; it simply has needs (food and care) to live, grow and flourish, and over about three or four years it learns that it can choose.

Genome sequencing has largely failed to deliver promised medical treatments for common complex diseases: a UCL team published in the BMJ in October last year showed that polygenic scores, built using the same techniques as a clinical drug trial, simply do not work for cardiovascular disease and cancer — which together account for 60% of fatalities — though monogenic (rare single-gene) diseases remain a valid target for genetic cures.

Association scores between the presence/absence of most genes and the incidence of major disease are generally very low; in the speaker's own Oxford work on the heart's pacemaker mechanism, knocking out a causally important gene produced only a very modest frequency change, demonstrating that organisms back up the great majority of their genes.