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Biotech / Medical : Celera Genomics (CRA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gao seng who wrote (355)	5/12/2000 9:59:00 AM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 746

Kudos to the chef! Blue Genes E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version By Al Kamen Friday, May 12, 2000; Page A45 Celera Genomics Corp., which is racing the federally funded Human Genome Project to unravel the human genetic code, has been having a lot of visitors to its Rockville labs in anticipation of the announcement that it has effectively won. Some in Congress, mostly Democrats, have chastised the company for not making public its data. Celera gets all the data produced by the publicly funded project while the company has been making its own data available only to pharmaceutical companies for millions of dollars. (Helps keep the private sector more efficient.) To show its kinder and gentler side, Celera has been taking folks on tours of its operation. Visitors are stunned by the central computer area, with its array of equipment far more impressive than the deck of the Starship Enterprise. There are two enormous projection screens, lots of other computer monitors and two smaller televisions: on the left the weather channel, on the right the business channel (just checking those stock prices). There are row after row of supercomputers crunching data and lots of little flashing green lights. The company is using genetically engineered bacteria to help complete the task of sequencing the human genome. So you'd think Celera would know from bacteria, right? Well, maybe not. Last month, Rep. Jerry F. Costello (Ill.), ranking Democrat on the House Science energy and environment subcommittee, two of his aides and four Democratic committee staffers went on a tour of Celera. After lunch in a conference room, four of the group got sick, apparently from food poisoning. The culprit? Likely bad tuna sandwiches, since only those who ate the tuna took ill. A couple of aides missed a day or so of work, we're told. "They tried to kill us," quipped one staffer. The company denies any such effort. The guests might have suspected something, however, when they signed those prelunch health waivers. washingtonpost.com