In chapter five of Promising Genomics Mike Fortun describes his meeting with Kari Stefansson in terms of how much Stefansson is inextricably linked with deCode Genetics. Fortun does not need to reconstruct the main event of this meeting because Stefansson gives them a presentation on his company that doesn’t deviate from its published intent in any way. Representing that with the excerpt from the non-confidential corporate summary drives the point home. It is difficult to separate the two entities: the fortunes of each are tied up in the other.
I thought there were some interesting parallels that came out in this chapter with the earlier piece we read on the autobiographies written by three of the key leaders behind the Human Genome Project. Fortun discusses one of them at length. Craig Venter is similar to Kari Stefansson in many ways; they are cut from the same cloth. Both are their companies. They represent the driving force behind the ideas they are selling and it is hard to see how their enterprise could succeed without pushing and pulling everything forward. Or at least that is how they seem to represent themselves and often how they seem to be represented.
Near the end of the chapter Fortun mentions how the clinical trial portion of the corporate summary was not getting as much notice as the rest of deCode’s goals; Stefansson replies that he did not write that part and so it is not as clear as the rest. That struck me as symbolic of the whole relationship between Stefansson and deCode Genetics: he provides the clarity and he provides the direction. Anything not of him or from him is lesser. I can see how he became such a polarizing figure in the debate over the Health Sector Database and who should have access to it and for how long or even if it should exist in the form proposed. Kari Stefansson does not seem like the type to appreciate arguments against his propositions.
"Bingo" on your first paragraph. I think that's a well targeted statement as to the tight association that is KariXdeCODE. Kari enacts such a connection when he chooses to provide Fortun the document; Fortun carries that connection to you as reader by featuring it in his chapter on Kari Stefansson (a chapter so short that the document stands out even more). Your comments about Venter, "the same cloth", and the intimacy that is the personXcompany are sharp and on target. Finally, I think you have Kari pegged (as least on the basis of what we have seen thus far).
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