| View Larger Image | A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life | Hardcoverby J. Craig Venter (Author)
| List Price: | $25.95 | | Price: | $10.38 | | You Save: | $15.57 (60%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Viking Adult | | Edition: | 1STst Edition | | Page Count: | 400 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 18, 2007 | | Sales Rank: | 91,345st |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The triumphant true story of the man who achieved one of the greatest feats of our era—the mapping of the human genome Growing up in California, Craig Venter didn’t appear to have much of a future. An unremarkable student, he nearly flunked out of high school. After being drafted into the army, he enlisted in the navy and went to Vietnam, where the life and death struggles he encountered as a medic piqued his interest in science and medicine. After pursuing his advanced degrees, Venter quickly established himself as a brilliant and outspoken scientist. In 1984 he joined the National Institutes of Health, where he introduced novel techniques for rapid gene discovery, and left in 1991 to form his own nonprofit genomics research center, where he sequenced the first genome in history in 1995. In 1998 he announced that he would successfully sequence the human genome years earlier, and for far less money, than the government-sponsored Human Genome Project would— a prediction he kept in 2001. A Life Decoded is the triumphant story of one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in science today. In his riveting and inspiring account Venter tells of the unparalleled drama of the quest for the human genome, a tale that involves as much politics (personal and political) as science. He also reveals how he went on to be the first to read and interpret his own genome and what it will mean for all of us to do the same. He describes his recent sailing expedition to sequence microbial life in the ocean, as well as his groundbreaking attempt to create synthetic life. Here is one of the key scientific chronicles of our lifetime, as told by the man who beat the odds to make it happen. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 18 reviews)
|
Craig told me about his book, so I had to read it! by B. Downing (phoenix, AZ United States)  5 Stars
November 11, 2009
I was relaxing on my boat after a day of sailing, enjoying a beer, while I watched this bald guy park his big power boat in the marina slip next to mine. He looked like the new guy in the marina, so I called out "looks like moving day!" He said it was, so I walked over and introduced myself. He told me his name was Craig, and as I did a double-take, I asked him if he was Craig Ventner. He politely corrected me and said "Venter." Wow! I told him how my wife and I saw the Discovery show "Decoding the Oceans", and asked him where Sorcerer II was, and he told me she was on a new expedition. There I was having a neighborly conversation with my new neighbor - a real live superstar! (I'm an engineer, sort of a nerd, so to me Craig is a superstar). I'm also a CEO and I enjoy reading about successful people. Armand Hammer, Chuck Yeager, Lee whatshisname, The Donald's "Art of the Deal", so I was intrigued when Craig suggested that I read his book "Decoding Life" to learn more about genomics. So, I did. Just finished it in fact. Couldn't put it down. Anyway, I left Craig to finish cleaning up his boat and went to pick up the pizza that I had ordered. On my way back, as I walked through the marina parking lot, what do I see?...a beautiful black Tesla roadster, and I immediately know who owns it. Back on the dock, as I walked past Craig, where he is sorting his dock lines, I ask "hey Craig, is that your Tesla up there in the parking lot?" Of course it's his. I knew it. He loves it, all electric hotrod, so fast it scares him, he says. So, naturally I offer to share my pizza with him, since its around dinner time now. Craig smiles and says the offer is tempting, but his wife is waiting at home for him, and we part. So, back on my boat, I'm so excited, I call my wife to tell her I just met Craig Venter, no Venter, not Ventner. As I'm talking to my wife I hear a knock on my boat, and guess who hands me a bottle of wine? Thanks Craig, I say, as I tell my wife Craig Venter just came by and offered me a bottle of wine he had left in the cooler on his boat.
Craig is one of us. He belongs to us. He is a National Treasure. Our brother that we share 99.5% of our DNA with, and he is of the most gifted human beings of our time. I'm thrilled and honored to have met him because its not every day you meet a guy like that with a mind so creative and flexible to be able to solve one of mankind's most complex puzzles, and yet be so thoughtful and warm a human being. Thanks Craig, I raise my glass and toast you, may your CETP gene help you live long and prosper!
B. Downing
| |
Damned generation by Janvil (Tx)  1 Stars
November 03, 2009
You fools have no idea what you are doing when you rate this book highly. This is the guidebook to DNA patenting for universal enslavement, organ harvesting, stem cell harvesting, living weapons testing experiments. This man is your evil task master and he's so confident that you're stupid enough to love your enslavement that he publicly announces in a book how he's going to get away with it. Morons. You deserve your lot in what's coming. I do not pity you whatsoever. Suffer.
| |
A real page turner, but... by Roy V. Harrington (Cleveland, Ohio) 5 Stars
March 17, 2009
After having rated the book as a 5 star effort, which is supported well in the reviews, I'll now raise a question or two.
Craig says early on in the book that believes the human genome is not patentable and should be in the public domain. I agree. To assure this, he says, he started to patent genes, assuming (I assume) that they would be rejected by the Patent Office or by the Courts. He failed! About 8,000 genes are now patented and their validity has not yet been tested. He could have tested them himself, if he really meant what he said. A touch of hypocrisy, perhaps?
He is now spending his money sailing around the oceans of the world finding new species and patenting them. This is a new and exciting endevor that can benifit manknd, typical of the man! I look foward to learning how this works out. Perhaps in his his next book.
| |
A morality tale of government science by David C. Bossard (PA) 5 Stars
March 13, 2009
In my view this is a great book, a good read. It reminds me of Chuck Yeager's autobiography Yeager: An Autobiography. The same in-your-face self-confidence and drive. Craig Venter is a genuine pioneer of modern science. If he comes across as a bit cocky, that's because he is, and deservedly so. I don't expect my heroes to be even-handed or self-effacing.
The real message of this book is the appalling way that in-house government science uses public funds to suppress competition. This happens too often. The reason the U.S. does not have heavy-duty rocket power is that NASA suppressed work on the "big dumb boosters" in the 1960s because they saw such work as competition to their cherished high-tech (also obscenely expensive and fault-prone) space shuttle dreams. Consequently we depend on Russia to do the heavy duty space launches. We almost lost the Pacific War in World War II because of the incompetence of the Newport Navy Laboratory -- see Anthony Newpower's true story of this sad tale in Iron Men and Tin Fish: The Race to Build a Better Torpedo during World War II (War, Technology, and History).
There is no reason why the NIH should have done the human DNA job. I say this with full respect for and without minimizing the personal leadership and achievements of Drs. Watson and Collins -- see in particular the excellent books by Francis S. Collings The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief and Coming to Peace With Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology. But their work would have been better spent helping along the general scientific community rather than playing politics and suppressing the competition. There is a role for Government "Institutes" but that role is not to take sides. I fondly recall the research sponsoring work of the Office of Naval Research (Bob Miller and Randy Simpson) back in the days when I started out as a young Ph.D. That was the right way to sponsor science.
Clearly DNA sequencing of living species would have been done anyway without the massive government funding of NIH, because of the vast potential for commercial use. The record of his achievement proves that Venter's private venture did the job much faster, vastly cheaper and more accurately. I applaud him for his fight to make the code available to the scientific community -- even at considerable personal cost and over the objections of his less idealistic commercial partners.
HMSchallenger
| |
Meet the controversial scientist who deciphered the human genome by Rolf Dobelli (Switzerland)  4 Stars
December 16, 2008
J. Craig Venter says he is one of the "leading scientists of the 21st century," and he is. Venter is a brilliant visionary and pioneer in genomic research. He was first to decode the full DNA of a living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae. Later, Venter moved up significantly in scientific class by completing the DNA sequence of the human genome. Feverishly ambitious, he is now researching ocean genomes in hopes of finding new fuel sources and of becoming the first scientist to create artificial life. Venter does nothing halfway, hence his designation by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people. Yet, in scientific circles, he has also earned some disdain as an egotistical "wild man of biotech." Many scientists see his use of his own DNA in the human genome project as a shocking lack of scientific decorum. He comes across, in his own words, as narcissistic. This self-absorption, and his pervasive portrayal of himself as an altruistic purist constantly battling bureaucratic philistines, interferes with his story about how he cracked the human genome code. Clearly, it's not easy being a genius, but it sure is interesting, and so getAbstract recommends Venter's account of his scientific achievements.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World
by James Shreeve (Author)
The long-awaited story of the science, the business, the politics, the intrigue behind the scenes of the most ferocious competition in the history of modern science—the race to map the human genome.
On May 10, 1998, biologist Craig Venter, director of the Institute for Genomic Research, announced that he was forming a private company that within three years would unravel the complete genetic code of human life—seven years before the projected finish of the U.S. government’s Human...
| 
| Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science
by James D. Watson (Author)
From a living legend—James D. Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize for having revealed the structure of DNA—a personal account of the making of a scientist. In Avoid Boring People, the man who discovered “the secret of life” shares the less revolutionary secrets he has found to getting along and getting ahead in a competitive world.
Recounting the years of his own formation—from his father’s birding lessons to the political cat’s cradle of professorship at Harvard—Watson...
| 
| Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA
by Catherine Brady (Author)
Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn—one of Time magazine’s 100 “Most Influential People in the World” in 2007—made headlines in 2004 when she was dismissed from the President's Council on Bioethics after objecting to the council's call for a moratorium on stem cell research and protesting the suppression of relevant scientific evidence in its final report. But it is Blackburn's groundbreaking work on telomeric DNA, which launched the field of telomere research, that will have the...
| 
| What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery
by Francis Crick (Author)
The widely-praised memoir of the co-discoverer of the double helix of DNA. Crick describes the experiences that brought him to the field of molecular biology, the failures and frustrations preceding his triumph, and the peculiar distortions that crept into popular accounts of the event. Illustrated.
| 
| Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA
by Kevin Davies (Author)
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick unveiled the double helix structure of DNA. The discovery was a profound moment in the history of science, but solving the structure of the genetic material did not reveal what the human genome sequence actually was, or what it says about who we are. Cracking the code of life would take another half a century. In 2001, two rival teams of scientists shared the acclaim for sequencing the human genome. Kevin Davies, founding editor of Nature...
|
|
|
