Reviews for There Is an Answer: How to Prevent and Understand HIV/AIDS

The average rating for There Is an Answer: How to Prevent and Understand HIV/AIDS based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-02-25 00:00:00 Robert Cortez This was a fascinating book. I only gave it three stars for what might be a lack in me: I don't feel I learned much more about the science than before reading the book. It is a fascinating story. Like any story it has characters that are all too human in the poor sense of the word. Inflated egos were all over the place, hindering the actual science. Spite came into play more than a few times as well. Venter himself was guilty of some of this as well. The author did not try to pretty him up, even if the bias of the book was in his favor. The author had asked the Human Genome Project for access while the story was developing and was refused. Later when he tried to get the info through a freedom of information act, it came heavily blackened out. The author said: "...to this day I remain perplexed why an enterprise that prided itself on global access tp its genomic treasures should be so secretive about how those treasures were obtained." I suspect this is what led to an account that is biased towards Venter. On the other hand, how could it not, when only one side was providing access to the information? It is pretty ironic that the private business, accused of keeping scientific information hidden for their own profit was the side that was open to this author being involved pretty much every step of the way. The government funded "open" project was the one refusing any access to the story. Ultimately it is a cautionary tale that pure science is never completely pure. There is always going to be motivation based on ego and who claims the academic fame in addition to love of the science itself. That may not show up on the genome but it is a basic enough human trait to make you wonder if there isn't a gene coding for that somewhere!

Review # 2 was written on 2009-01-14 00:00:00 Keri Valdez 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