PLAYERS in the SCIENCE game

- Dissecting the stakeholders in the biotech business by studying Craig Venter’s quest to sequence the human genome -

Ask a hundred people who knew Craig Venter to describe him, the first thing ninety-nine of them would say is “brilliant”. That is expected, from his resume, anyone could say that he’s smart. But watching his various interviews, they would immediately follow with the word “arrogant”. The man did take it on himself to decode life and play God after all. Many problems ensued and thus many believe, and rightly so, that Ego would pose many problems to a project as ambitious as that. I would like to, however, argue that it will take an ego that big, an immovable belief in its eventual triumph to help a man achieve wonders in this society.

Venter stands as a man larger than life. The public either adored and admired him as a maverick, or hated and feared him as the Devil himself. Yet, I see a man with multiple leashes on his necks, struggling to navigate in between demanding stakeholders, who with one action could ruin Celera.

1. The science guys:

First introduced in the book, in 1998, the scientific community was sturdy on its way to accomplish the Human Genome Project. Slowly but steadily, the coordinated attempt from the US, Japan, Germany, France, Canada and China abided by the Bermuda standards, which value accuracy and unity over speeds and efficiency. Venter started Celera, the private sector’s attempt to sequence the human genome, during this period; and sure enough, the two came crashing head to head.

To the scientists working on the HGP, Venter’s effort was a blow to the face, a betrayal of all their values. Venter announcing the effort to the public alone could cause the funding for the HGP to diverge and decrease.  If Celera finished the sequencing before the HGP, all the funding to HGP for 8 years then would have been wasted. Funder would then be more reserved and alarmed and might just decrease or even diverge funds for the HGP. The existence threatened, the HGP decided to sacrificed a bit of its own moral high ground (the Bermuda standards) to focus on speed to publish more to the public first, all to prove its worth.

Of course, the fundamental differences were the methods the two used. HGP preferred the trusted Sanger sequencing while Celera put their money on the controversial shotgun sequencing. But this was the matter of pride. Venter did try his best to be humble, wanting to cooperate. Francis Collins, the head of the project, so sure of his own judgment, publically stating the alternate method to be unreliable. Additionally, Craig poached (and definitely needed to) some of the talents working on the project to work for him, so the heat worsened. Competitiveness has always been romanticized and idealized in the US. It sure did its jobs, and now both parties would have to race against time and each others, meanwhile sacrificing the chance for maximum efficiency.

2. The cash cows:

To build infrastructure and acquiring the machines and talents needed, a business needs capital. And capital means responsibilities, as Venter would have to juggle the demands of Celera owners.

The first obvious candidate was the US government. Basically the biggest business in the world with the deepest pocket, making money from 320 million taxpayers, the government has to take the responsibility to fund large scientific projects such as this. In this case, the Department of Energy already funded the HGP, and also shook hands with Venter behind Collins’ back, understanding where the most beneficial position for the government would be. The DOE, too would demand results, and hopefully any cooperation between its competitive sons to save face with the public. As said, Celera struggled to obey, and eventually failed miserably.

The second source of funding is the venture funds who put their faith onto Celera. Particularly, Celera paid its first paycheck to its employees with money from the Perkins-Elmer Corporation. The mother company, represented by Tony White, made sure to engrave onto Venter’s brain of his responsibilities to shareholders: Returns from investment or Growth in net worth. From a corporation’s standpoint, not any of its individual, it wouldn’t want to pursue any grandiose mission to save humanity, it would simply want to make happy for its board members and see its stock grow in value, which is particularly tricky because the decision to bring Celera public.

The invisible hand of the market moves unpredictably and the generic stock traders reacts erratically. Yet, stockholders always want to see their numbers green and above their options’ price. Venter had to tour around the country and sang just to get people to understand what he was doing, not mentioning buying it. After the IPO, Venter had to make sure Celera’s face is clean and smiling to keep the public calm enough to not act too radically.  Any scandals, any leaks or a dip in the revenue chart could mean the end of Celera’s cash flows.

And the ones who were hoping for the effort to succeed the most was the clients, both guaranteed and potential. So basically humanity. The big pharmaceutical companies would be the first to bet on the Celera, having enough cash to handle the risks and enough greed to want to make more. Celera had got its first clients: Amgen, Pharmaceutical Upjohn and Norvatis, paying 25 million dollars in one go, when Venter’s crew hadn’t even got the machines started yet. Venter’s career would be on the line, if Celera went bankrupt. Not to mention, hundreds of thousands of labs and researchers had been longing for genetic date for their own researches. Plus, an infinite number of humans yet to be born could use the information to fix their genetic deflects. For Venter’s crew to visualized, Venter coined the number: “A hundred million customers”

3. The “hungry” mob:

They are not particularly angry, but always thirsting for information. They build statues and the next minute, point torches and pitch forks at the same hero. The outsiders remain outside of the operation, but always have a say in what’s “good” and what’s “bad”.

The press gets to portray the company. Missed a step, and the media can smell it and transcribe it straight to its consumers. A little bias here, a little mischaracterization there, and the public can turn hot to cold in one note. Venter had better foster good friendship with the press.

Yet, its just a tool to the true master of the company. Since its conception, with the power of many, the public could bend corporations to its will, sometimes intentionally, using boycott, protests and influencing politicians, and sometimes unintentionally. For a man who hasn’t act selflessly once in his entire life, it would be hard to imagining him not patenting all of the human genome and make billions out of it. But Venter chose not to, and intended (or at least tried) to release the date to the public instead. One could easily argue that he tried to do so because he wanted to be loved by the public, to be seen positively. Which would only have mattered if the public deemed a public genetic database to be in its best interest and morally right. Plus, the public decides the stock price.

Thus one of Venter’s duty is to remember to pat the public on its head to make sure Celera is seen in the best light possible.

4. The team:

At last, to build, to discover, to create, to do anything at all, one always need to good team. Venter had to make sure he’d got the best people in Celera and get them to co-operate. Venter wasn’t the only one taking pressure from the aforementioned parties, because his subordinates had eyes and ears, too. They also understand the magnitude of this effort in the course of history, and that alone could render humans numb with fear and anxiety. Thus, one more final line in Venter’s job description was to boost the employees’ morale.

In conclusion, any man courageous enough to take the burden of a task this herculean needs an equal size ego and intellect to take the heat that comes with it. In the old days, scientific breakthrough could have happened with Faraday alone in a lab with a bunch of aluminum wires. But for a breakthrough that requires massive co-operation, it takes a village and a man just a little bit too arrogant for his own good.