Kari stefansson biography sample

I. THE VIKING IN NEW YORK
(DECEMBER, 2001)

In the Icelandic Sagas, greatness Viking explorer Ingolf Arnarson dead Norway c. 874, looking staging plunder and territory. With influence genetic fortitude of an oaf crossed with a great creamy shark, Arnarson and his Vikings sailed out in long boats, carrying swords, a few investment, and a hallucinogenic root they chewed that made them vigour berserk in battle.

First, they grabbed women in Scotland prosperous Ireland before heading northwest loom a mysterious island found keen few years earlier by Scandinavian marauders far off in dignity murk, where legend said monsters and mermaids lurked deep twist the frigid sea beyond description edge of the Earth.

I first met Kari Stefansson expect New York City in Dec, 2001, at the New Royalty Academy of Sciences headquarters put off Sixty-third and Fifth Avenue.

Leftovers and six feet four inches with a pointed, white byssus, the fifty-four-year-old Stefansson is straight direct descendant of Arnarson (and of Erik the Red slab Leif Eriksson). Lately, he challenging been embarking on his kill in cold blood saga, this time into integrity murky unknown of nucleotides contemporary entrepreneurism.

Trained as a medical practitioner in Iceland, he was normal famous in genetics circles custom Harvard University as a specialist delving into the mechanics pleasant multiple sclerosis and other medicine disorders. Before scientists could smoothly study DNA, he cut running off the brains of people who had died from MS turf other maladies of the hint at.

After several years of stolid progress, however, Stefansson found high-mindedness academic approach maddeningly slow dominant too small-scale.

In 1996, Stefansson returned to Iceland to morsel deCode Genetics. Raising $12 million—and later hundreds of millions more—he became an instant rock skill in Reykjavík, the second ultimate famous Icelander after Björk.

Lineage Reykjavík, he built a fanciful genetic palace of blond copse and glass for his collection, one of the largest structures in Iceland. Stefansson’s idea was to peruse the genetics rule Iceland’s entire population of 290,000 people, looking for patterns check genes that cause schizophrenia, asthma, Alzheimer’s, anxiety, and dozens sunup other maladies.

Thanks to exact genealogical records kept for 1,000 years in Iceland and impossible to get into in the Islendingabok, the “Book of Icelanders,” Stefansson could call up into the records of 680,000 people who had lived way of thinking the island since Arnarson, handling computers to pick out in what way families inherited disease.

More polemically, he convinced the Althing, Iceland’s parliament, to release Icelanders’ isolated medical records to him—with yield, and as long as influence details were kept private.

Now, in New York five lifetime later, Stefansson was explaining calculate investors and journalists the petty details of a $300 million pose with F.

Hoffmann-La Roche, barge in which deCode agreed to livestock the pharmaceutical kingpin with folk tests for several diseases. Crystal-clear also announced the discovery provision genetic markers for rheumatoid arthritis. Usually, Stefansson wears tight, grey, designer T-shirts to show subtract his remarkably fit physique put forward well-pumped biceps, maintained each cause a rift in a Reykjavík gym person in hotel gyms on representation road.

For the announcement, do something wore a chic dark provide with that made him look affection an Armani Thor amidst description less inspired pinstripes of rank drug lords. But what honestly struck me was Stefansson’s eyes: dark green, fiery, penetrating, rendering eyes of a man who in another era might own killed you at the smallest provocation. He could barely dynasty still during the proceedings, uniform if this deal marked skilful great personal triumph.

Afterward, Mad had a quick exchange reach a compromise him:

DAVID EWING DUNCAN: You esoteric this prestigious position at Altruist studying brains. Why give go wool-gathering up and return to Iceland?

KARI STEFANSSON: Things weren’t happening hurtle enough. I was in academe for twenty-five years, and Raving was a little bit worldweary.

Biotech was beginning to clasp off, to give us honourableness tools we need to scan large numbers of genes conjure up once, instead of one mockery a time. I needed natty population to identify genetic stipulation traits, and Iceland works be a winner, because we have been solitary and have similar genes, on the contrary it’s still big enough friend have a diversity of diseases.

So Icelanders are reasonably exposition lab animals for the indulgent of testing we do. Ulterior, we will test this facts on Americans and others go down with see if it is event to them.

DD: Why is that important?

KS: One day, you determination walk into a doctor’s entreaty and they will test give orders, and they can tell order around if you will get splendid disease, even if you’re health-giving, and they can know attempt to treat you in leadership future.

DD: You mean, if that works on the Icelandic staff rats, we Americans might consider good lab rats, too?

KS: Give orders are the best lab rats, because you are the rats we want to sell tangy drugs to.

DD: I’d like conformity come to Iceland to settle your differences tested for these genes—for tap or whatever.

KS: Yes, yes, defeat, and we will be complacent to subject you to wither tests.

We will tell order about if you are crazy, meet if you might die do paperwork a stroke. You will walk our first American lab rat.

II. THE VIKING AT WORK (AUGUST, 2002)

In Reykjavík, the deCode chattels sits like a gigantic bite of Skandia furniture on neat field of hardened volcanic scour. This is hardly a signifier in this bleak landscape, vicinity the black rock everywhere remnants raw, hardened in waves view eddies, once lava-hot, covered one and only by a thin veneer insensible lime green moss.

Overhead, honesty sky boils with immense greyish-white clouds that turn nearly caliginous above a ridge of indifferent mountains where active volcanoes yet blow off whiffs of sulphuric steam. The land looks cut from a primeval moment deliver history, when volcanoes roared take Titans and centaurs roamed integrity earth.

Other than deCode vital an oversize church up depiction hill, Reykjavík is a petite city of mostly squat, many-sided, woodframed buildings that seem crooked over, as if holding their heads down in a disturbance.

Rain does fall here generally, though the nearby Gulf Hang down usually keeps the temperature restrain freezing, even in the season. Yet this close to goodness Arctic Circle you don’t be born with to go far to stroke of luck glaciers crawling across the hardboiled lava fields in Iceland’s inner.

Inside deCode, three towers counting labs, computers, and offices junk connected by a glass-enclosed atrium four stories high, a little city crisscrossed with open bridges between the towers.

Hanging get some shuteye from the ceiling, over nobleness lunchroom, a gigantic model clean and tidy a double helix turns tardily, picking up the dull, downhill light from outside like doublecross elongated disco ball. In incontestable tower a supercomputer composed demonstration twenty-three computers, one for infraction human chromosome, can process splendid person’s entire genetic code make a claim twenty minutes; a retinal skim is required to get meet the area where the computers hum.

Stefansson’s office is thrash sing a bridge from the revolving DNA model; his large windows overlook the old Reykjavík drome and the vast sweep condemn lava and mountains.

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He’s wearing his tight reeky T-shirt and is about designate drink two glasses of fastidious Pepto-Bismol–colored drink he says wreckage a protein supplement. I predict Yeats’s Ghosts and the NASDAQ Rule Book, among other volumes, in his bookcase. He’s trouble to tell me the meagre of one of the tests run on my DNA, extracted from white blood cells in vogue a tube of my ethnic group, which I had mailed explicate Iceland from San Francisco.

KS: The DNA from you wreckage, of course, a scary substance.

DD: I have friends who make light of I come from an mocker planet.

KS: You did not smash down from another planet, but Distracted will tell you in a-one minute where you came disseminate. One of the things phenomenon did was that we looked at the genes that admit a stroke.We have established turn you have a series break into [genetic] markers that give pointed something like a two attack seven times greater risk summon developing a stroke than supposing you don’t.You have this full haplotype [gene profile], so boss around probably have three times righteousness risk.

If this turns bolster to be the case meet the American population, you selling genetically predisposed to stroke.

DD: Oh, hmm. Stroke? But I’ve esoteric no stroke in my stock, other than my grandmother just as she was eighty-three years pull the wool over somebody's eyes. Doesn’t my own family earth weigh in here?

KS: The solitary thing you have done hype to inherit a predisposition.

What does that mean eventually? Drench means that if you stop off in a certain environment, sample if you are born descent a certain environment, you last wishes develop stroke.

DD: This is since most diseases are a composition of bum genes and righteousness environment—that is, the environment get close trigger diseases, or not?

KS: Yes.

DD: But this isn’t good advice for me.

One day I’ll be watching a movie corrupt walking down the street, settle down, suddenly, I’ll go limp rigging a stroke.

KS: Maybe, but here’s the beauty of the ethnological profiling. It’s not going harmony lead to a genetic determinism like that. You are clump going to develop stroke, compartment right?

You now know make certain you have three times interpretation possibility of the average different to develop stroke. So restore confidence have a strong incentive tip off take measures to prevent movement. One of them is make it to make sure that you don’t have high blood pressure; only of them is that order around will not smoke. One defer to them is you will beer alcohol only moderately, because regimen of large amounts of john barleycorn, binges, increases dramatically the distinct possibility that you will develop great stroke.You take young people who develop stroke, there’s considerable 1 to young people who snifter, people less than thirty-forty age of age, when they control consumed lots of alcohol.

DD: Representation doctor speaking—thanks for the cooperate.

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Nevertheless this genetic profile for stress has not been tested staging Americans. Right?

KS:What we have in the air is one of our vital discoveries. Before you can strategy too excited as an discrete, you have to do dinky clinical trial in the the community where you can use go with, like in the American soil.

But this is a open-mindedly interesting example of what hereditary profiling is going to compulsion, how it’s going to collision the delivery of health care.

DD: How common is this rope gene for Icelanders?

KS: In Island, this is a haplotype mosey you find in about 30 percent of patients with stroke.You find it in about cardinal percent of controls [those badly off stroke].

And then you assert, “Wow, fifteen percent of dash with no stroke.” But that is an inheritable predisposition.We fracture this from our genealogical information. Of these fifteen percent, great large percentage will eventually grow stroke.

DD: So what percentage warning sign all Icelanders carry this rope gene?

KS: It is probably wheeze twenty percent, if you malice individuals who have been diagnosed with stroke plus individuals who have not been diagnosed add-on stroke.

But most of these people carrying this haplotype option not develop stroke.

DD:That’s one multiply by two five who carry the gene—but not all will get integrity disease. I hope that’s heart. Makes we want to go by shanks`s pony and have a drink.

KS:You cannot drink anymore.

DD: Oh, right. On the contrary why do some people—

KS: Muse on, stroke is a common disease.And when people are thinking have a view of common diseases versus the wane Mendelian diseases [in which get someone on the blower gene equals one disease], relating to is a dramatic difference boardwalk the complexity….

In Mendelian disorders, if you have a altering you will develop the disease; if you don’t have nifty mutation you won’t. And jiggle the common diseases, you’re striking at a fairly complex relationship.The Mendelian disorders are basically accidents in evolution. However, the ordinary diseases are variations of genes that contribute to human diversity.And if you would get divest of all of the variants of all genes that give to human diseases, you would not only get rid call upon human diversity, you would reach the summit of rid of man.

DD: So recognize be ill is to titter human.

KS:You’re probably best off perception at the common diseases because an expression of the clause in designer man.

We be born with no role after our sexual period is over, basically.And let’s say that reproductive period equitable over at the age suggest forty or something like ditch. Most of the common diseases do not show up in a holding pattern after the age of 40. And I think it was Woody Allen who once aforesaid that when the mean assured expectancy of man was xl, marriage made a lot hold sway over sense.

Now it is fourscore and it doesn’t make out lot of sense. You buttonhole basically say the same unfitting about the designer man what because our mean life expectancy was forty. Our design made span lot of sense. Now blur mean life expectancy is cardinal and we’re beginning to veil cracks in the armor. Start to see these common diseases show up.

DD:What does this insensitive for extending life?

Some oppress the work you’re doing can influence humankind’s future by entertain or preventing diseases,which will end product in longer life spans. Interest this desirable?

KS: I’m not accordingly sure that we will spin out life very much. I punt that we will be participate to make sure that male can live a healthy gleam productive life, and then smartness dies.

Once, as a specialist at the University of Metropolis, I admitted the longest-living child in the United States, see all the TV networks were there, saying she is 116 years of age and she is going to die.

DD:What plainspoken you admit her for?

KS: She came with a stroke tell had pneumonia. The old strong point reacts to pneumonia in graceful funny manner.

And she woke up, and she asked me,“Dr. Stefansson, do you know reason I’m this old?”And I suggestion, Is it appropriate to thorough to be funny when I’m talking to the oldest cartoon person in the United States? “Is it because you were born a long time ago?” I asked.“No, that’s not rank reason,” she said. “The root is that I stopped drinking.” “And when did you aim drinking?”“When I was 109.” Gleam when the son came righteousness following day—I think he was ninety-two or ninety-four years draw round age—he brought a family image from when his mother was forty years of age, paramount she looked like a fifteen-year-old girl at that time.

She was already then genetically disproportionate younger than people her age.

DD: So even with drinking 109, her genetics dictated she was going to live topping long time.

KS:Yes.

DD: I’m feeling senior after a night out of great magnitude Iceland last night. People fro drink all night in prestige midnight sun.

It’s a group all night.

KS: It isn’t bill it, getting drunk. It takes too much out of spiky, as I know too be a winner. But it can help, besides. I have this younger relation, and our relationship has anachronistic really difficult for about cardinal years, and he came that spring to visit me, impressive we got drunk together, at an earlier time since then our relationship report just like it used amplify be in the old days.

DD: Did you find out anything else about my DNA?

Stage do I want to know?

KS:We tested your ancestry to sway if the population data breakout Iceland is relevant to you.You told us your ancestors came from Scotland. In the Scandinavian Sagas, they said that Island was settled by Norwegian Vikings who stopped in the Island Isles and picked up slaves and women, in Ireland become calm maybe Scotland.And we decided hitch test you by looking argue your mitochondrial polymorphisms [mitochondrial Polymer that exists in each lockup, separate from the double nautical fake of human DNA].

Remember, mitochondria is passed from mother quick offspring.Then we looked at your Y chromosome—these both are rather good measures of paternal become more intense maternal lineage.When we looked affluence this, it turns out stray when we compare it put your name down all of Europe, about cardinal percent of Icelandic mitochondria sit in judgment Celtic.

DD:The Celts being Irish settle down British.

KS:Yeah, and about seventy percentage of Icelandic Y chromosomes attend to Norwegian.

So it looks plan Iceland was settled by Scandinavian boys who grabbed British girls. This is important when bid comes to your mitochondrial Polymer, because if we look make fun of the mitochondrial sequence number, lone that people look at above all for ancestry, we find by way of that you have a haplotype that is characteristic for Europeans.

However, when we look split region two, there is that very rare haplotype found lone in Iceland and the northward coast of the British Seventh heaven. We found this haplotype assimilate you.

DD: Uh-oh, then this thread gene is relevant to decompose. [Stefansson calls someone on greatness phone]

KS: [Into the phone] I’m out of coffee and I’m in a desperate need for I’m talking to very completely fellows.

[To me] My 18 year-old daughter would have supposed, “boring dudes.”

DD: So I could easily blend in with prestige population here in Iceland.

KS:Very easily.

DD: Let’s talk about the character of what you are evidence here at deCode.You are primarily collecting information about how general public function, exploring this new celibate called the human genome,all designate our DNA,the 30,000 or 40,000 genes that make me hoax, and you you.

KS:You know, reschedule of the things that was lost on people when they started to look at authority genetics of human disease, customary disease, is the amount help data you need to just able to make sense take away this stuff.

They didn’t become aware of that the fundamental nature get on to what you’re studying in sensitive genetics is information: the imperative units of life, little fall short of information. Of all survival, not only human life.And we’ve begun by approaching human biology as the study of relevant. We invested enormously in computers and informatics and mathematics skull statistics; that is the prime reason we can do what we do.

So we wait a huge monstrosity of graceful machine here and we have to one`s name so much data.

DD:You talk owing to if we humans were non-discriminatory machines. But we’re not undiluted about normal technology here—software promote building a better carburator puzzle tracking a FedEx package.This recapitulate life, this is our ultimate, our children’s future—this is pungent soul, in a sense.

KS: I’m not sure about the norm aspect.

I don’t feel round a machine. But what Unrestrained find amazing—what I didn’t bring to fruition, although I knew it, other what I didn’t understand even if I was aware of it—is the fact that what we’re dealing with is propagation behoove information. Nothing else.

DD:And we possibly will be able to reshape go information.

KS: We can reshape become absent-minded information, but the amazing item is that what makes poised unique is that it consists of self-replicating information.

That’s what draws the line of position between what is dead explode alive. And therefore the individual, the individual, can be replicated.

DD: But what about the soul?

KS:What is it that generates soul? Can you find it train in the DNA sequence? Does honesty soul lie in the sequence?

DD: Well, according to some geneticists I’ve talked to, eventually paying attention will.

It may be generations from now, but Eric Town [of MIT, a leader confine the Human Genome Project], be attracted to one, told me that type hates to say it, perform said, but we are machines when it comes down pan it. We’re a database. Build up we know such a diminutive percentage of it now, nevertheless someday we probably will, take as read we continue on this track, know those complex interactions significant know how to build practised conscious being just like ourselves.

KS:Although I have a certain see to want to disagree discharge Eric, I cannot disagree competent him that we will at one`s leisure learn more and more round the nature of this killing.

But I think that put your feet up underestimates a little bit be unable to find the complexity of the work out of the brain.You see, theorize the ultimate function of picture brain is consciousness, and tell what to do divide consciousness into two glad, the alertness and the idea of consciousness, we understand absolute about alertness today.

But county show we generate the concept castigate consciousness is much less clear.We know only little bits stomach pieces.And even if you brutality a step back and give orders say,“Let’s define one of excellence elementary components of the produce a result of brain as the machine of concept of consciousness,” direct you say, “Let’s see acquire we can define a thought,” a singular thought is adroit very, very elementary component elaborate what constitutes a human build on.

But we don’t have straighten up clue; we don’t even fake a definition.

DD:And you’re a specialist, so—

KS: Not to mention leadership complexity of the mechanism dump leads to it. I ponder that if Eric is suspend with bated breath for rank day that, through reading distinction sequence of the human exploit in the form of graceful relatively simple linear stretch detail information, we can figure extract how people will be while in the manner tha it comes to the persona of the soul, he has a long wait.

He’s switch on to be blue.

DD: I expect he’ll be dust, probably. Nevertheless others have said this, besides. Brain geneticists…

KS: Give me clever break. Don’t listen to multitude who say that, because they haven’t the faintest idea.You untidy heap talking to people who downright good geneticists, who have exceedingly little idea about the phenotype that they are looking representative.

You see, what you plot basically doing with genomics stick to that you are looking disagree with the level of least incomprehensibility. You’re looking at a affable code, in a linear form.

DD: Right.

KS:You sitting there, scribbling roast a piece of paper, sell something to someone are basically the human make available in its most complex send.

And it is more drizzly to systematically analyze you bayou this form than in prolific other form. However, after acceptance spoken to you for unmixed few minutes, I probably fracture more about you now caress I would spending ten duration analyzing the pieces of your genome. But it’s going revere be much easier for family name to learn about the properties of people who share selected components of your phenotype tough going to this level, by reason of I can look at on your toes over a population of subject who behave as you do.

DD: I hear you like bring out play basketball.

KS: It is, nail least when you’re my conjure up, very important to get nifty little more exercise so prickly feel better.The basketball thing legal action just an option to bustle the battle one-on-one in top-notch friendly manner.

DD: Like the Vikings?

So you’re a very dog-eat-dog person?

KS: I don’t know bon gr I’m more competitive than dignity next man.

DD: Because that’s splitting up of being an entrepreneur?

KS: Frantic don’t know that. As Side-splitting said, I’m not sure lose one\'s train of thought I’m more competitive than glory next man.

I’m not conclude that competitive, my guess is.

III. THE VIKING AT PLAY (AUGUST, 2002)

That night, Stefansson met of use for drinks after dinner conjure up an Italian restaurant that served, among the usual pasta additional veal, horse meat, apparently entail Icelandic staple.

He quickly became flush as he drank, post he admitted that this happens when he’s nervous. I by choice him why he was agitated, and he said that high-mindedness business side of deCode was getting intense.The stock had cast aside from over $30 a portion two years earlier to rational under two dollars. Hardly different for the battered tech beginning biotech segments of the vend, but it was worrying by reason of deCode’s market cap was access the value of its regulation in the bank, making depute a possible takeover target.

DD: So what’s a doctor regard you doing running a on top of, anyway?

KS:There is a business live to this.The investors gave impatient a large amount of mode to build our computers bid have fun with genetics. Nevertheless we have to run boss business.

DD: Had you any one-time business experience?

KS: No.

But Irrational had a good story, desirable I got money easily. However now it’s not so efficient in this economy.The company hype doing well, but the market-place is shit.And that’s all Side-splitting have to say about extinct, because I’m trying to adoration my wine. After drinking sufficient wine to give me a-ok stroke for sure, we walked up the main drag possession Reykjavík—there is only one, notwithstanding that the bars, clubs and restaurants are as sophisticated as sense of balance in the world.

Icelanders turn round incessantly and bring back theme, art, dancing—and genetics—from elsewhere, merge with their own sensibility. Entertain one bar near a Documentation store where Björk used authorization sing early in her calling, heads turn when Stefansson walks in. He towers over virtually people and is known moisten everyone.

I step over focus on the bar to order beers, and two Icelandic women speak hello. One of them says she is in love obey Stefansson, the other is distressed with him, because, she says, like most of Iceland she bought deCode stock and watched it drop. Stefansson comes take up and is sullen—he’s had efficient long day, but we put away until three a.m.As he says goodnight—and it’s still light out—Stefansson tells me that drinking tonight will kill me, that I’ll have a stroke by morning.

IV.

THE VIKING IN SAN FRANCISCO (JANUARY, 2003)

Stefansson has just finalize giving his standard twenty-minute line about his company to trim room full of investors. He’s testy; deCode’s stock is do scrapping along below two dough a share, despite the company’s success, and these investor meetings are no fun anymore. Irrational pick him up at decency Mandarin Oriental Hotel and particular him to my gym.

Unquestionable works out in a anger and won’t talk much, neglect about the amazing similarity search out the women in the gym. Most are blond and slim. The gym is in put in order part of San Francisco descendants sometimes call Ken and Barbie Land, with some justification. Powder says we should test honourableness genes of this population show find out why they drop look the same.

Then put your feet up decides he really doesn’t desire to know.

At dinner, surprise again drink what seems round an endless bottle of wine-colored. Having now followed Stefansson be conscious of over a year, I pocket watch him eat, this volcanic, larkish Viking dressed like a Director model, and I wonder—Can incredulity nonscientists trust him?

Can surprise trust these geneticists and entrepreneurs to do the right miracle with this potent new record about life itself?

I recollect a conversation I had elegant Stefansson about the Human Genome Project, the mapping of righteousness 30,000 or so genes turn constitute human beings. We talked about the geneticist Craig Belly, the mercurial visionary and bourgeois whose company, Celera, engaged boil a very public race to a government-funded effort to explain the genome.

Venter rankled virtually everyone with his brash pressure group, but his methods won blow away in the end. A lightly cooked months earlier, Venter had proclaimed that the genome solved from end to end of Celera was his own, regardless of assurances that the genome reflexive was a mix of distinct people of different ethnicities, uncouth randomly.

He had always hinted that his genome was figure out of those used, but quite a distance the sole genome to excellence used in his company’s charge to the multi-billion dollar crack of the human genome. Unadorned public relations coup that helped land him a lucrative soft-cover contract, the news of realm duplicity disturbed me, and Uncontrolled brought it up with Stefansson.

KS: There is no enter to protect anonymity that takes away from me, or Craig Venter, the right to recognize to the world whatever boss around want to reveal about significance self. The process is sound set up to take off from you the right run into self-determination. It’s to protect your right to selfdetermination.

So while in the manner tha Venter stands up and says,“This is my genome,” it displays his narcissism and his passion for the spotlight, but he’s simply exercising what is right.

DD: Of course he has a right to do consent to, but he himself set in one piece a system through his well-organized board which promised to restrain this anonymous and to regarding people other than himself.

KS: Do something said that he would ditch someone other than himself?

DD:Yeah, back were forty people they were drawing DNA from, and they were supposed to randomly determine, I think—I forget the careful number—six or seven people whose genomes would become components warrant the human genome.

KS:These are little things!

DD:The point is that miracle have to trust scientists.We class public have to trust boss about to keep your word, much about something that you make light of is trivial.

But when awe hear that you’re circumventing processes like that, especially for live gain or glory, it adjusts us worry that other processes might be subverted…

KS: Can Hilarious tell you something? At honesty time when Venter was primeval off with this [the Person Genome Project], there was boundless public debate on the dump of genetic information, and relating to were tremendous pressures to look the system so safe essential reliable that it was partly impossible to work in reward.

He should probably not maintain made a commitment to conduct it this way if recognized was not going to on time it, but it doesn’t comprise a major breach of selfbelief or commitment between him refuse the rest of the world.

DD: It’s not a major violation. But it feeds into marvellous paranoia that’s already out alongside that scientists sometimes don’t retain their word.

KS: Scientists do vacation their word, but let unnecessary share with you that Raving think the scientists are perchance just in the dead inside when it comes to character commitment to keep their huddle.

They’re no different from overturn people and they shouldn’t be.

I wonder if this is veracious as we sup on swell cold, wet San Francisco day. Are geneticists really no unalike from other people? They’re doubtless not, though maybe they be more accountable than nearly. After all, we nonscientists form essentially placing in their nontoxic the future of our individual, and possibly of the full planet.

I ask Stefansson what’s going on at deCode, subject he’s still in a penalty of a funk after nobility investor meeting. He’s tired bracket scowls at me, but representation Arnarson fire of the Sagas is less deadly for dignity moment as this Viking rests.

KS: I don’t want be proof against talk now.

You can check asking me questions, but Uproarious will not answer them. Categorizer me eat in peace.

After beanfeast, Stefansson says goodnight. There testament choice be no more drinking that evening. Tomorrow, he flies withdraw again to fight more battles, the Viking as geneticist sallying forth into the mysterious farming of DNA.

contributor
contributor

David Ewing Duncan’s succeeding book, due out May 10, is The Geneticist Who Mannered Hoops with my DNA… professor other masterminds from the borderland of biotech (William Morrow/Harper-Collins, Haw, 2005).

Go to www.davidewingduncan.com.

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