Jingyi 评注：摘自 The Sunday Times，2010年5月。整篇文章描述了一位在越战期间被征招入伍当军医的一位加州的、游手好闲的美国青年 Craig ，经历与海蛇鲨鱼周旋之后，忽然明白生命意义，致力于研究人类基因的逆转故事。主人公 Craig 被记者描述为不受人喜欢的类型（'self-aggrandising, pain in the arse'），深谙资本市场的意义，几经流浪，重新开启学位修习，一举获得UC San Diego 诸多博士学位。之后教书、研究机构工作，让其萌生必须自己成立研究所的想法。这个世界总是会给极度努力工作的人意料之外的嘉奖，而 Craig 是将这种嘉奖几乎发挥到极致的人。1992年，成立研究所，发现了导致儿童耳朵发炎及脑膜炎的菌种，Haemophilus influenzae。1998年，成立另一家公司组织研究人类基因测序，直接向美国政府计划的科学家发起挑战。在政府项目与 Craig 一同向国家交付研究成果的时候，一位政府科学家戏称：“原来自己在小跑，某天需要停下来，等待其他参与者一起过终点。” Craig 表示部分同意，并回应，“我认为，正是竞争，才开启了起跑线”。最后，关于 Craig 公司的研究成果，例如，更改藻类基因以使得其表现出更能为人类所用的特性 —— 记者认为，可以用到墨西哥湾来缓解原油泄漏问题。

maverick = talking in a special way
aggrandise = increase the power, status, wealth of ...
self-aggrandisement = elevate someone himself/herself
map the human genome = sequence the genome
artificial life = man-made life
a man of supre immodesty = an extremely arrogant
renegade = betrayal, where Craig's father consider his own son
ply = 1. commute in a specific time; 2. layer of laminate material;
plunder = steal goods with force during a war chaos
Someone pliess the oceans to plunder their riches
altruism = make others wealthy
chubby = not thin
bloke = normal person
helm = a handler or wheel which controls ship's direction
late-onset = something (ESP syndrome) showing up after 21
gun-toting = carring gun
tryst = a secret meeting with secret friends or lovers in a romantic way
tip off = warn someone secretly
dishevelled = not neat, messy
foment = agitate
interrogation = ask in a serious way, usually in court
physiology = study relate to human body
pull off a coup = push a campaign which success is quite surprising
understate = express around something intentionally
truce = pause the war for a wile
It was more a truce than a tie.
villain = bad guy
fete = welcome as ...
The genetic scientist with an eye for money and self-aggrandizement has made new waves by creating the world’s first artificial life form.

1.His race to map the human genome earned Craig Venter the nickname Darth Venter. Last week, after creating artificial life in a laboratory, he was accused of playing God.Yet life once seemed so unbearable to the American biologist that he tries to end it all, In 1967 the Vietnam draft propelled Venter, a 21-year-old college dropout with an IQ of 142, from a laid-back existence in California as a surfer and beach bum to the carnage of the communist Vietcong’s Tet offensive against US bases. As a medic at field hospital in Da Nang, he saw hundreds of soldiers die, sometimes when he was massaging their hearts.

2.After five months in what he called “the university of death”, he decided to swim away from the horror. “My plan was to carry on swimming until I was exhausted and then sink,” he recalled in his 2007 memoir A him pause, but he swam on -- until a shark prodded him in a “bump and bite” attack. “Then I became consumed with fear. What the f*** was I doing? I wanted to live, more than I had ever done. I turned and swam for a shore in panic.” Back on land he concluded: “I wanted my life to mean something, I wanted to make a difference.”

3.Venter’s severest critics wish the shark had been more peckish. He was vilified by parts of the scientific establishment for taking them on in a competition to sequence the human genome -- the biochemical instruction manual for Homo sapiens. The result in 2000 was a a dead heat between the publicly funded human Genome Project, which intended to release the knowledge free of charge, and Venter with his schemes to commercialize some of the results. A man of supreme immodesty, Venter relished the controversy, flaunting his Learjet, Rolex and yacht. Improvement to insults deriding him as “a self aggrandising pain in the arse” and “an opportunistic maniac”, he railed against the “morons” who failed to appreciate his vision and declared:“Is my science of the level consistent with other people who have gotten the Nobel? Yes.”

4.Last week the 63-year-old maverick stunned the scientific world again by announcing creation of the first cell controlled entirely by man-made generic instructions. The technology, he claims , opens the door to biology’s holy grail -- a way of creating synthetic bacteria that produce environmentally friendly fuels as natural waste products. Some scientists were appalled. Fears of bio-terror vied with the spectre of “bio-error”. One declared ir was “a Pandora’s box moment, like splitting the atom or the cloning of Dolly [the sheep]”. To which Venter had reply: goats. The “host” bacterium in the experiment causes mastitis in goats and would be harmless outside the lab unless injected into these animals:“And we don’t work with goats”

……

下载全文