Interviewee: Ari Patrinos. Ari Patrinos, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's sequencing effort and friend to the leaders of both projects, speaks about the media surrounding the Human Genome Project. (DNAi Location: Genome > The project > Players > Competition and the media > A race between interesting individuals)

Well the media liked of course this, describing this situation as a race. Also both individuals were very interesting individuals, personalities, they were cast as in a sense diametrically opposite. One side would say, you know, the light, the good side versus evil, and there was analogies of this kind, or you know, vice-versa, it wasn't always that Craig was evil and Francis was good. There were stories that went the other way around, of in fact, the evil Government scientists over-funded with bloated budgets, you know, kind of ganging up on this entrepreneur who rose to challenge the status quo. So it went both ways and so it had all the elements of a wonderful story that could be picked up. And scientists very rarely make these type of news, always they're kind of dull and uninteresting and here were two individuals who were anything but. I mean they made good copy, there was no question about it.

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