Much is at stake. Not only billions of dollars in new drug sales but a fundamental question: will this book of life – and the wonders that it contains -- be bequeathed to mankind for the benefit of all, or locked up for the financial advantage of a few?

Leading the race is Dr. J Craig Venter: millionaire yachtsman, ferocious competitor, maverick scientist and now a businessman willing to do whatever it takes to win.

“It’s the beginning of the future of medicine. It’s the end of ignorance,” Venter states while racing his 82-foot sloop, 'The Sorcerer', on Chesapeake Bay. “At the start of this decade 1991 there were less than 2000 human genes known, at the end of the decade, or start of the new decade, we’re going to have all 75,000 of them.”

Racing him to the finish is a $3.5 billion, international, publicly funded consortium called the Human Genome Project. They’re intent on getting their information out first to stop private companies like Craig Venter’s from locking up the human genome.

“I think it would be unfortunate if a large fraction of the information about us, the biological instruction book, were tied up in a mesh of licensing and patenting regulations that made it difficult for anybody who wants to study this information to do so,” said Collins.

Depending on the outcome of the race is ten-year-old Lauren Reimer. She has a rare genetic disease called congenital myasthenia that makes her so weak she can barely walk. Her only hope is that the racing scientists will find her malfunctioning gene and fix it.

Actor Lee Dupree has the same hope. Two operations have failed to halt his colorectal cancer. But Lee may get another chance at a cure – a chance coming from the labs of Dr. William French Anderson, the father of gene therapy. Dr. Anderson and his team have developed a new gene therapy that may be able to stop cancer cold.

“If these initial trials are successful, it will then open the door for a new generation of gene therapy delivery vehicles which basically target within the body. What gene-based medicine will do over the next century is to revolutionise the whole process of medicine. Diseases can be treated at their core.”

But the genetic revolution is proving to be a double-edged sword, with as much power to hurt as to heal – something Terri Seargent discovered with devastating consequences. Seargent’s lawyers believe she is the first case of genetic discrimination in employment to reach the court system. Fired from her job when her employer discovered she had Alpha 1 Antitrypsin, a genetic disease that damages the lungs, Terri is now fighting to rebuild her life. Despite this she still believes the genetic revolution will save her life.

“So I believe that science is going to come to my rescue,” claims Terri. “Genetic science is just overflowing every single day with brand new things and my only hope is that Alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency is significant enough that science will tackle this.”

From the decks of Craig Venters 82-foot racing sloop to the labs of the Human Genome Project, this documentary tells the story of a spectacular scientific struggle by focusing on the people who will be helped and hurt by its outcome.