Search - NOVA - Cracking the Code of Life on DVD

Great movie

Kirsten Thiel | Portland, OR USA | 02/06/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am a high school Biology teacher and every year I show this film to my students as an introduction to our study on Genetics and Heredity. This is a great film that illustrates how the Human Genome Project began and examines the potential ethical dilemmas as well as potential benefits the completion of this project may have for society. Rarely can I show a "science" film and have so many students afterwards agree that it really was fascinating. In fact given its 2 hour length we can't finish it in one sitting and they beg me each day "Can we finish that movie today?" This movie stimulates some fascinating conversations in my classroom, and as a teacher, who could ask for more?"

Very educational

D. Houtz | Durham, NC | 08/13/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I teach a college class on the Human Genome Project and always use this as my intro. It gives a good generic background in layman's terms, and then I can easily refer back to it later in class, as "remember in the movie you saw...". I recommend it for ninth grade or older audience, including adults.

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For the general public

rainforest | USA | 01/01/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This movie describes the competition between J. Craig Venter (Celera) and Eric Lander (MIT) trying to decode the genome first. It is old and it does not cover all the way until they finished in 2003. It describes the big difference between government vs. private funded research and the controversies on trying to patent gene sequences, etc. It is a very informative movie and gives the foundation to understand new things related to the genome that are being discovered in the present as advances in the proteome, etc. It clears the mind to describe that although sequencing the genome has been one of the biggest discoveries of the 21th century, it is not the cure for anything, but a door for the future to cure of many diseases. By the way, I thing Eric Lander is the best speaker I ever heard and you just must see him to understand why I say that.

The only complain I have is that some of the interviews are a bit slow and the questions could have been better."