A Life Decoded

July 30, 2007
A great deal has been written about Venter as the head of Celera, the private research company that won a race with the National Institutes of Health's Human Genome Project to sequence the human genome. His role in this historic accomplishment has been both vilified and praised. Now, in a clumsily written autobiography, Venter offers his side of the story, portraying himself as the eternal underdog, fighting for truth and attempting to make scientific discoveries solely to help others. He is opposed in this struggle by a cadre of scientists out to advance their own careers, by a federal bureaucracy incapable of rationally using public funds to promote scientific advances and by the heads of corporations willing to do almost anything to make money. Venter accuses all of the big players—the Human Genome Project's Frances Collins and Nobel laureate James Watson, among many others—of outright dishonesty. Ignore the hyperbole and be skeptical of the accusations, but there's still a terribly depressing story about the politics of big science. Venter also attempts to contextualize the controversy swirling around the patenting of DNA sequences. Despite the lack of unbiased insight, this is well worth reading for the fascinating perspective it offers on one of the major scientific discoveries of all time.

October 1, 2007
Surfer, Vietnam War medic, and founder of Celera Genomics, Venter is probably best known for his role in the private sector's sequencing the human genome prior to the federally funded Human Genome Project. His autobiography is a colorful, firsthand account of intense egos and competition among research labs and national governments and at sea, where his J. Craig Venter Institute sponsors a sailboat equipped with sequencing machines to investigate marine microbial populations. While not overly modest, Venter does acknowledge many of his collaborators and paints an intriguing picture of the challenges, complexities, and dilemmas of cutting-edge science and medical research. What may surprise readers is the tentativeness and uncertainty of his conclusions about potential impacts of his genes on his health (one of the genome samples sequenced was his own), but that's the reality of the early developmental stage of today's genome sequencing. Venter argues convincingly that it will take decades to get a big-picture view of what our genes can and will tell us about ourselves. Patrons who enjoyed James Shreeve's "The Genome War", John Sulston and Georgina Ferry's "The Common Thread", and/or Robert Cook-Deegan's "The Gene Wars" will find Venter's account a readable, provocative addition to collections.Mary Chitty, Cambridge Healthtech, Needham, MA

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2007
Venter attractedenormousmedia attention in the 1990s for audaciously creating a privately financed company to compete with the U.S. government to sequence the human genome. Several books have capitalized on that irresistible David-versus-Goliath theme, and now Venter reveals his own viewpoint on the momentous project. For a future topflight scientist, his personal biography was unusual: indifferent student, surfer bum, Navy corpsman. Tending to casualties in Vietnam in 196768, Venter writes, was his life-altering experience, and he went into medical research. A dry sense of humor leavens the technical aspects of Venters account of his scientific interests, as does his palpable impatience with resistance to how he wished to pursue those interests. This politics of science structures Venters narrative, casting the author as pushing the genomics revolution forward against the objections of his opponents. A natural antiauthoritarian, Venter ditched careers in academia andgovernment, only to be fired by the corporate chieftain who bankrolled his genome project. Three marriages and numerous sailing adventures round out Venters memoir, which is sure to be as controversial as the man himself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)