Remembering J. Craig Venter: a relentless scientist who changed biotech — and was all too easily misunderstood
Why this matters: health reporting relevant to everyday decisions and well-being.
J. Craig Venter, a scientist whose relentless ambition helped turn genetics from an artisanal trade into an industrialized information machine, died Wednesday at 79. The cause was side effects of a cancer treatment. Along the way, he did things that can only be described as really cool. He raced against a government-funded project to sequence the first human genome, grabbing headlines around the world; traveled the ocean in his sailboat collecting genetic information about sea life; and removed a bacterium’s genome and rebooted the organism with an identical set of genes he and his team had synthesized. He drove fast cars, drank red wine, and pissed people off.Read the rest…