The arrogance of this statement is astrounding. Perhaps you didn't mean it to come off that way?

First of all, these are important genes - extremely important genes, because they are a large part of the basis of that whole "response to stimulus" thing that people are pretty fond of associating with life.

That said, regardless of their actual importance, it's pretty remarkable for anyone to say any gene is important or not important considering how little we actually know about biological processes. I see all the time people doing "omics" work and wanting to jump to conclusion because of data, but data-only makes a relatively blind conclusion. There's still far far more unknown than known, and these genes are fundamental genes for starting to actually build a functional model of human biology. They are boilerplate genes.

It's probably that much harder to find these genes responsible for such basic sensory abilities that so much work must have gone into them if not for their lack therapeutic importance as you suggest, but also for the prestige scientists knew they would receive if they did discover them first.