Art Weil wrote:
>
> Dear "Big E" and Livetts;-
>         You are both, of course, right on. But I remember nickel candy
> bars and 50 cent haircuts that have risen through the roof. On the
> other hand: the Parker 21, first ball-point pen, cost $21. Now you can
> get a ball-point for about $.19. Calculators, computers have come way
> down. It seems to me that the popularization of DNA and the many
> applications may hurry the simplification and availability.
>         Of course, I could be wrong. I was--- once.
>                 Art

Even at current prices, demand for DNA analysis far exceeds available
resources.

The bright young lad that figures out how to automate the extraction of
DNA from a sample (ie a bit of mollusk, a bit of skin, a bit of tree
bark) will become very wealthy, and get prices down to the level that
routine taxonomy will be feasible.