Aside from its cost, Venter's latest commercial venture faces practical challenges. The three gigabytes of computer space required to store a genome fits onto a small hard drive, and the three billion DNA base pairs must somehow be squeezed onto a CD. And as bioethicist Arthur Caplan articulates, “I don't think it makes any sense at all to have one's genome mapped right now. There's not enough practical utility in having a map—not much can be done diagnostically, and even less therapeutically. Paying $500,000 now is like being first on your block to own a $25,000 high-definition TV when there are almost no transmitters broadcasting high-definition TV [signals] yet.”
But Venter is not alone in trying to produce genomes on CD. At least three other companies, including the United Kingdom's Solexa, are working on similar projects. However, he claims his motives are not commercial. Venter was chairman of the Maryland-based company, Celera, that carried out the private effort to decode the human genome. He was ousted from the company in January 2002 when it switched business directions from bioinformatics to drug discovery and development. He now runs several nonprofit ventures focusing on genetic bioethical concerns and on finding energy alternatives that produce lower gas emissions. He says that profit from the CD genomes will fund these projects.
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