Reason Writers Around Town

In the Wall Street Journal, Ron Bailey reviews the memoir of genome decoder Craig Venter.

Comments

Paul | October 31, 2007, 4:09pm | #

"Lessons from Abroad".

Makes me think of what I learned from my ex-wife.

Paul | October 31, 2007, 4:10pm | #

My bad, wrong thread. Feel free to delete.

J sub D | October 31, 2007, 5:12pm | #

A Life Decoded by Craig Venter just went on my To Read list. In advance, thanks Ron.

javier | October 31, 2007, 5:19pm | #

he was on colbert last night. He was really interesting talking about engineering microbes to produce octane or hydrogen as byproducts. He called himself an individualist and seems very much like a rand style 'men of the mind' sorta thinker.

Petronius | November 1, 2007, 12:59pm | #

The automatic ads that accompanied this article were for mail-order gene sequencing services, all outside the quiet groves of goverment or academe. What hath Venter wrought?

Buckland | November 1, 2007, 1:29pm | #

Haven't read the book, but an interesting question would be his take on the collapse of Celera.

From memory, in about 2001 the market became aware that lots of his patents used publicly available sequenced portions. This would invalidate the patents. The stock price collapsed, at the time setting a record for loss of equity in 1 day. Venter left soon afterwards and is only mentioned in passing on Celera's web page now.

brainpik | November 1, 2007, 1:44pm | #

So --- why did he agree to a draw? He could have simply crushed them. What did the government have over his head -- an endless IRS audit?