Controversial news in science. II

June 18, 2010

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Part II

During his young years he had always preferred surfing than studying, nobody would imagine him as a future genius in science. All along his life he made things at his own way. Despite the opportunity to avoid enrolling in the Navy by his enrolment in college and even when he was against the Vietnam War, all the same he enrolled in the United States Navy, where he was trained as a medical corpsman and was sent to Vietnam.

He remained in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 serving in a tour of duty at a field hospital, in the intensive care ward, where he had to be confronted with terribly wounded and dying soldiers. These experiences made him feel the desire of studying medicine.

Recalling those days Venter says he "was introduced to medicine in probably the toughest way possible "and he got just fascinated with the lack of knowledge they had and had a desire to do something more."

In 1972 he received his B.S. degree in biochemistry from the College of San Mateo in California and entered the &#&University of California&#&, in San Diego to become a doctor.

After a class with Gordon Sato and a project with Nate Kaplan he changed his mind and studied scientific medical research instead of medicine receiving his Ph.D degree in physiology and pharmacology in 1975. After graduation he took a research position at the National Institutes of Health.

At his own personal way John Craig Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute, where he is the president now. During the late 1990's his company, Celera Genomics, began to participate in the race to sequence the human genome. Along the way, Venter got rich, and made more enemies than friends.

Among other scientific adventures John Craig Venter and his colleges at the Venter Institute outfitted a 100-foot sailboat as a research vessel. It was Venter's personal yacht, which was named the Sorcerer II. Craig Venter announced on March 4, 2004 the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition to help assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities. The Sorcerer II effort was supported by different institutions.