Free Surf 58

Surf's up
I recently came across an article on Craig Venter in The Daily Telegraph, posted on Edge. It seems that the publication of the complete sequence of Venter’s genome is imminent, in an “as-yet-unnamed journal”. This is far from the first profile on Venter, but they’re always worth reading because inevitably you get this sort of thing:
Though current understanding is primitive, Venter’s DNA will eventually reveal the genes that act with education and upbringing to shape his health, outlook, and even personality. Perhaps there are clues to explain why he left home at 17 to surf. There may be glimpses of why he tried to drown himself after witnessing the Vietnam war, only to return home determined to restart his life. Perhaps his DNA will reveal how an obscure scientist who has rebelled against authority all his life became a major figure in biology who likes to boast that he took on the British and American governments and won.
Perhaps they'll even have to update the genetic code:
UUU=Phe
UUC=Phe
UUA=Leu
UUG=Leu
CUU=Surf
CUC=Surf
CUA=Leu
CUG=Leu
You get the idea.
If the author really wants to know the most important risk factor for leaving home at 17 to surf, here it is: being 17 in California, a few minutes from the Pacific Ocean, the year the Beach Boys released the album Surfin’ USA.
Anyway, how much of this does the author believe? Later in the article, we read this:
So what does his code tell him, other than that he does indeed have blue eyes? For one thing, he is now taking a statin drug, after finding a variant of a gene that puts him at risk of heart disease. But the big picture is mind-bogglingly complex. ‘There are more than 300 genes that contribute to blood pressure regulation alone,’ Venter tells me. ‘People say there are things like “colon cancer genes”. There are not. We all have the same genes, but with variation in their spelling.’ As he puts it, ‘It is perfectly clear that it is not clear.’ And even if we understood it all, he admits, there is still the influence of the environment to reckon with. ‘I don’t worry about what people will find in my genome because it is so hard to interpret’. What we really need to do to dis-entangle nature and nurture is to sequence the genomes of millions of people as they go about the business of living and dying; only then will we see which bits of DNA really count.
I recognize that it’s common practice in magazine journalism to set up a strawman at the beginning of your piece, and then knock it down at the end. But I worry (as I’ve noted before) that all anyone will remember will be the strawman, which gets repeated endlessly. While finding the right balance between justified excitement and skepticism can be a difficult thing, a little better effort in some quarters would help.