It would be interesting to see a comparative ROI study of several large, publicly-funded, projects similar to the HGP. Such data would be useful in debates about policy, one would think.
I'm quite tired of people claimming that building a bridge to nowhere incresed the economy just because the spending is added to the GDP. And the article uses exactly that kind of accounting.
Myriad genetics is a $2.5 billion market cap genetics firm that built its entire company around only a small subset of the human genome (think dozens out of tens of thousands) and they got started a decade before the HGP did. That one company is just a small taste of what's to come.
It's only a bridge to nowhere if you can't see the future.