Your Brain and Your Self: What You Need to Know Book

Very nice read. Describes the often tumultuous political scene that underlay the Human Genome Sequencing project.

Originally the Human Genome project was publicly funded, and included many of the brightest human geneticists in the world. In addition to being brilliant scientists, this group contained some fascinating personalities. The author does an excellent job of conveying these often extreme personalities and setting the scene for what would eventually escalate into the scientific equivalent of all out nuclear war.

The story really gets interesting when a rogue geneticist name J. Craig Venter decides to leave the public consortium and join a corporate venture with the intention of beating the public scientists to the prize. Most of the book tracks Venter and story. He is a fascinatingly conflicted character, equal parts megalomaniac and saint.

The book delves into the science in an approachable manner. This is pretty interesting in its own right, but the real story is the brinksmanship between the public and private sequencing groups.

Overall if you are interested in learning about human genomics and like a battle of the titans plot line this is the book for you