It's an interesting article, but the title could use some work. It does get around to asking "So What's Perl Got to Do With It?" which is what you're thinking throughout the article, but it doesn't do a good job of answering it. You could have dropped Perl from the entire text (minus the "Conclusion") and had a good article as well.
It also never really makes the case that the Human Genome Project was in jeopardy, much less that Perl saved it.
And this article is from 1997. I'm japh myself and I love the language, so don't take this as a knock against perl. But why the ancient perl articles today?
I think the perl users on here are experimenting with what's of wide enough interest for others to care - http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/ is publishing lots and lots of new perl stuff but I suspect most of it isn't particularly to hacker news' taste.
It also never really makes the case that the Human Genome Project was in jeopardy, much less that Perl saved it.
Interesting article, but crap headline.