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Cracking the Genome by Kevin Davies, Free Press, £16.92, ISBN
0743204794

WHICH Nobel prize-winning scientist was also a star in two of the most
compelling dramas of the 20th century? No, don’t bother reaching for a film
guide, you’ll find the answer in Cracking the Genome, Kevin Davies’s
fascinating book about the race to decode the human genome.

And the answer is James Watson, head of the international, publicly funded
Human Genome Project between 1988 and 1992. The project vied with the American
company Celera Genomics to be the first to sequence the human genome. Watson is
of course better known as part of the team which identified the structure of DNA
in 1953.

Davies is well placed to tell this latest story, and does so with skill. As a
senior biomedical journalist in the US, he knows the major players, and he is
practised in the art of portraying the rivalries of science. Davies is also the
author of Breakthrough: The race to find the breast cancer gene (John
Wiley, 1996).

Although he tries to be even-handed in his account, it’s clear that Davies
has a lot of time for Craig Venter of Celera Genomics, the brilliant but
unconventional outsider who threatened to upstage Watson’s efforts.

There are obvious similarities between Davies’s book and The Double
Helix (latest edition Penguin, 1999), Watson’s own account of the earlier
race. Both tell stories of high-minded academic endeavour laced with bitter
playground rivalry, which captured the public imagination.