TIME: Craig Venter 'Scientist of the Year'

Gary Van Domselaar • December 22, 2000

TIME: Craig Venter 'Scientist of the Year'

``When president clinton held a press conference last June to mark what was billed as one of the most important scientific milestones of the century, the cracking of the human genetic code, two men stood together on a White House podium to share the credit. As leaders of competing genome projects, Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and J. Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics, were recognized, correctly, as the two most important players in the worldwide effort to spell out the 3 billion `letters' of the human genome (the biochemical recipe, encoded in our dna, for manufacturing and operating a complete human being).

``Yet while scientific diplomacy required that Venter and Collins get equal recognition for this epochal achievement, insiders knew that, to paraphrase George Orwell, one man was more equal than the other. The genome would certainly have been sequenced if Craig Venter had never been born. But if he hadn't decided to attack the problem with a radical approach, using the most sophisticated computer technology available, and to drive the effort with the full force of his rebellious personality, it would have taken years longer to complete. By forcing Collins and his colleagues to double and redouble the pace of their work, Venter guaranteed that the scientific rewards and potentially lifesaving medical treatments derived from decoding our genes would start to pour in [JWB: to his pockets as cash] almost half a decade earlier than anyone had expected.''

Full Story:
http://www.time.com/time/poy2000/mag/venter.html

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