Customer Reviews

The Common Thread

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When James Watson wrote the wonderful _The Double Helix_ in 1968, many of his scientific colleagues were scandalized, even though it was about how Watson and Francis Crick had fifteen years before discovered the structure of DNA. It was perceived as unseemly to admit that they were racing other labs for the goal. Nowadays, that's simply the way science is done in many cases. It can have lamentable effects; the rush to get the research about "cold fusion" into print meant that other researchers did not have the chance to check the credibility of the experiments, and science as a whole suffered. In the case of the Human Genome Project, the effort to find the three billion letters in the human DNA recipe, it was a race from the start. In a book that will remind many of Watson's chronicle, _The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, and the Human Genome_ (Joseph Henry Press), John Sulston, who led the British team on the project, joins with Georgina Ferry, a science writer, to tell how the race was won, and by the good guys.

It won't surprise anyone that Sulston himself is a good guy in his own memoir. Sulston and those who worked with him campaigned for money for their efforts, to be sure, but they were committed to making any data they uncovered public. In the other corner was Celera, a private company headed by Craig Venter, a former public scientist who, as head of a private firm, understandably did whatever he could to ensure the profitability of that firm. It was Celera's intention to map the genome, sell its data to those who wanted it, and patent genes. Venter's publicity material hinted that there was slack and inefficiency among the project scientists at the public trough, and he invited them simply to stand down and get out of the way while he finished it up, and incidentally while he made millions from whoever wanted to use the data he uncovered. Sulston had to speak out against the commercialization of the effort, and this put him squarely against those in America who think that commercial efficiency has every advantage against government stagnation. The resultant public relations battle is fascinating; Venter was good at it, and the public and politicians early became convinced that public ownership meant little. At one point Sulston says bitterly, "Once a particular point of view has taken hold in the public imagination, it's extremely hard to offset it. The only recourse is to compete on the PR front in the first place. I find that a profoundly depressing thought. Is it a fantasy that simply being honest will in the end be powerful enough?"

This is a great story, one that will be mined in the future by historians of the epochal Human Genome Project. The book is not a good text on molecular genetics, or even the specifics of sequencing which are the science part of the story, but it is a splendid discussion of how science is done nowadays. (The "beer-fuelled discussions" between participants are recounted, as well as possible, in their place.) The difficult aspects of the struggle between public science and private science get a thorough and thoughtful history here. Read this account and rejoice in a big win for humanity and the common good over profits, this time.

This is a chronologically written, biographically styled account of the race to sequence the human genome. This book is co-authored by an English scientist who finds himself drawn into an increasingly political battle, both to beat the private sector to completion and to defend the genetic information gleaned from falling under commercial patents. He casts Celera Genomics' Craig Venter (the private sector competitor) as the villain in this account. I suspect there are many more sides to this story (Venter himself gives wounded rebuttals aplenty in subsequent interviews). How passionately you agree with Sulston's own conclusions depends very much on your opinion of private sector bioscience and how biological information should be subject to intellectual property rights. If the decoding of the human genome interests you, this public sector account of what happened should clarify and colour the picture. A small criticism: The different methods of cloning, mapping and sequencing are complicated stuff and key to understanding how this story unfolds - the non-technical reader could benefit from a basic glossary of technical terms.

The book has 280 pages of text, 8 pages of INDEX (very detail), 7 pages of photographs. I think some conceptual figures would greatly help the lay readers to understand what the shotgun approaches is, but no figures or table included unfortunately. The most important conclusion of the book is, written in page 240, "Eric Lander, Richard Durbin and Phil Green all independently analyzed the information and came to similar conclusions. There was no evidence in the paper that the whole-genome assembly had worked adequately."

However, Sulston never explains the fact that even if the shotgun approach leaves the "gap", it may not be the critical problem for the purpose of drug candidate search. His sponsor/customer - the big pharmaceutical companies wanted to pursue this specific aim for the lowest and fastest cost.

Sulston vehemently criticize the Sciences' editor-in-chief Don Kennedy for the unethical practice of accepting Celera Paper. I wish I could hear more about the Kennedy's side of the story. Considering many US scientists are running or advising their own company (Eric Lander himself is the founder of Millennium Pharmaceuticals), there seem to be a conceptual schism between US and UK scientists toward the issue.

A superbly told story of Sulston's experience in mapping the human genome, whilst heading the Sanger Centre. The rival group headed by Venter although on the same quest, was attempting to patent everything it found. This is obviously a natural consequence of the huge investment made by various parties in his group. The excitment of scientific discovery and ground breaking work is peppered with the tension of the work being undermined by the politicking of Celera, the Venter company.

Celera's 'shotgun' approach proved less successful in the long run, so they had to continually use the publicly released results of Sulston's team in order to bolster their own findings. Needless to say Venters findings weren't made available to the publicly funded efforts. It does highlight the best and worst of science. Science as a methodology relies on dissemination of knowledge, and honesty. Bringing the exigencies of big business into that mix and problems are inevitable. I since become better acquainted with Venter through other sources, and he's clearly a brilliant, charismatic and driven scientist-who just happens to spearhead the burgeoning industry of biotech. I will be interested to see where his new work on changing one species of bacteria into another leads.

I've read reviews above of how Sulston sounds bitter, but for me he came across with great humour, intelligence, humanity, and obviously very uncomfortable with political shenanigans, he'd rather just get on with the science.

Books like this let you feel, if for only a moment, that you are walking among giants. John Sulston's memoirs of the battle for the human genome is deeply written and brutally honest, immersing the reader in a side of science rarely seen by the public. Presented as an archetypal clash between good and evil, the contest of wills pits John and the open scientific community against Craig Venter and the forces of corporate interest. It is a defence of the purity of science from the corruption of greed.

Before this, though, comes an introductory glimpse into the formative years when molecular biology and genetics slowly converged. As richly detailed as this early history of both John's life and the field of genetics is, however, much of this narrative seems detatched. Large sections are told factually, and the story misses much of the emotional investments found later in the book. Still, it is a serviceable introduction to one of the most important events of the twentieth century.

And so the story of the genome picks up in earnest in the second half of the book, when John's struggles with both politics and himself infuse an essential aura of human depth. It's as well-put together as any thriller; even prior knowledge of the outcome of the race doesn't diminish the suspense and sheer anticipation of each event. The scope and depth of the human genome project is laid out in broad strokes, with many major players acting out their roles to keep science free and open. There are plot twists and double crosses, triumphs and setbacks. But the surest sign that the common good won out is that the information of our very heritage is freely strung across the internet.

Despite the book's flaws -- the prose is rarely eloquent -- the story is essential reading for anyone even remotely interested in the inner workings of science and politics. Certainly, there is a danger in only seeing one side of the story. However, John's excitement and noble intentions are undeniable: the world can benefit more from unbridled selflessness than from runaway capitalism.

I echo Rob H's comments but with a cautionary note. The author of this book assumes the worst about his competitor Craig Venter. Venter himself insisted throughout the "race" to sequence human DNA that he would release the data to the public with only a few mild restrictions, such as a few months' delay to give his paying customers a head start in their research. Was that promise a Trojan horse, designed to kill the nonprofit efforts, after which Celera would become the Microsoft of the genome? Or is the author -- with his upbringing a mix of old fashioned British socialism and the 1960's counterculture -- simply incensed at the idea of anyone making a lot of money from a scientific discovery?

I suppose there is no way to tell for sure, and in the end it doesn't matter. The author's passionate commitment to his cause makes this book impossible to put down. I kept wondering what was going to happen next (even though I vaguely knew the what final outcome was). In the process I learned a bit of the science, too. At least I now know what BACs, YACs and cosmids are, and the pros and cons of whole genome shotgun sequencing. I think Rob underestimates the amount of science that one could learn in the midst of this exciting story.

This is an entertaining book with little to recommend it on the human genome side. It's full of cliches and poorly drawn analogies. The story of the worm project (for which the author later received the Nobel Prize) was terrific, if poorly written. Sulston is a guy who clearly hates Venter and is full of venom, only thinly disguised by his holier than thou attitudes - poorly argued for his side, at that.
The book is half good in that it presents a notable first person episode in science, but is too self statisfied and non-reflective to be useful in understanding the important questions raised by the book.