Sorry, Carmelo  -  your post on J Celera Venter is not coherent.
	I detest Venter as much as anybody.  But what he says about 
taking microbes from international waters looks OK, doesn't it?  And 
you fail to comment on it.

R


>A LETTER TO ONEARTH MAGAZINE
>Re: Craig Venter interview in Summer '06 issue
>
>
>I normally enjoy reading OnEarth's articles but was
>dismayed and disappointed by the Craig Venter
>interview in your Summer '06 issue
>(http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06sum/frontlines2.asp).
>Only at the very end of the interview does the
>reporter ask him about the international controversy
>stirred by his marine microbe-hunting expeditions.
>
>Here is the excerpt:
>
>Q: People have already charged you with everything
>from eugenics to biopiracy.
>
>A: The biopiracy one is my favorite.  We're sailing
>across the open ocean in international waters and
>there's this current moving across the Pacific at 1
>knot.  So there are microbes in that current that move
>from open ocean into the 200-mile limit of French
>Polynesia, and suddenly the French call that French
>genetic heritage.  Right?  And they want to own it and
>capitalize on it.  It takes months of paperwork to take
>200 liters of seawater now from the open ocean.  Before
>we published our paper nobody cared, because nobody
>assumed anything was there.  So I think it's quite
>comical that we're called pirates for describing the
>data and making it available for the world.
>

	You proceed to comment on other, terrestrial matters:-

>Venter's response is a rather arrogant and casual
>dismissal of the legitimate concerns of people all
>over Latin America that have denounced his activities
>as biopiracy.  Either he deliberately misrepresents the
>views of his critics or honestly does not understand
>the ethical and political implications of his work.