Most people like to separate their charitable donations from their business investment opportunities, and in doing so sometimes unwittingly simultaneously support both constructive and destructive activities from a human health and environmental perspective. Rare individuals like Dr. Venter are visionaries that are driving scientific advancement forward, with or without the help of government agencies and charitable organizations that are actually mandated to improve human health. He is aided by other individuals of financial means or know how that share his passions. As in any biotechnology venture, there has been a high degree of risk and huge potential in Dr. Venter's commercial ventures.

Most sophisticated investors are well aware that high reward comes hand in hand with great risk. However, I think that there are an increasingly growing number of wealthy individuals who would like to see their investments also work in the most positive way to benefit humanity. While institutional investors and venture capitalists may not carry such notions and are driven purely by the profit motive, it is these angel investors that have largely laid the foundations for the biotechnology industry. They have also been pivotal to its survival in the recent lean economic times.

While a tremendous amount of money is raised by disease-focused charities to support scientific research in academic laboratories, most countries do not permit these charities to invest in applied biomedical research in industrial laboratories. Consequently, charitable support from these agencies does not get to scientists in medical biotechnology companies that are the most likely to actually generate practical improvements in the diagnosis of disease and the delivery of new therapeutics. Hence, we often hear about the huge gap in translational biomedical research.

In the pursuit of truly innovative biomedical research, it is extremely difficult to procure grant funding from government agencies that tend to be very risk adverse. Dr. Venter's legacy of biomedical innovations also include the strategies by which he is able to fund his vision. Personally, I find his demonstrated ability to go against the established system and conventional thought to achieve laudable goals quite inspirational. I am also very grateful to those angel investors who are willing to take a chance on people like Dr. Venter so that we can all benefit.