The story of the man who achieved one of the greatest feats of our era--the mapping of the human genome. After nearly flunking out of high school, Venter went to Vietnam, where the life and death struggles he encountered as a medic piqued his interest in science and medicine. In 1984 he joined the National Institutes of Health, introduced novel techniques for rapid gene discovery, and left in 1991 to form his own nonprofit genomics research center,...

This documentary examines the complex race to decode the human genome. Examines the work of, and contains interviews with: Francis Collins, director of the National Center for Human Genome Research; J. Craig Venter, head of its rival, the private Celera Genomics; and the Whitehead Institute's Eric Lander, one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project.