President Clinton's awareness of the Human Genome Project, Ari Patrinos
Description:
Interviewee: Ari Patrinos.
President Clinton's awareness of the Human Genome Project.
Transcript:
There must have been a desire, maybe going up, at that time I didn't know, but maybe all the way up to President Clinton himself, to see some resolution here as opposed to this continued feuding. In retrospect now, we know that President Clinton had become aware of the project, had become actually quite fascinated with it, had met both principals, I think he had met Craig Venter and his wife on one of the renaissance weekends that he used to have around New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and I think he had also met Francis Collins in some of the events, again associated either with the Human Genome Project or with legislation dealing with genetic discrimination for example. So he'd probably taken, you know, taken note of both men, their prominence, their capabilities and their importance in this and therefore it isn't unlikely, and I am sure I would say it is probably quite likely that he personally would have expressed a desire and a commitment to solve this problem and, and find some solution.
Craig Venter, leader of the private effort at Celera Genomics, speaks about his company's reliance on the public data for reassembly of the Celera sequence.