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" When Professor Joseph DeRisi needs human blood to grow a batch of the malaria parasite for his research, he opens his own vein. Given the nationwide blood shortage, he has said, donating his own blood is simply &amp;quot;more ethical.&amp;quot; That one fact gives you an idea of the death-zone altitude of moral behavior at which Professor DeRisi manages to live.  When you&amp;#039;re working day and night trying to save millions of children from an agonizing early death, you&amp;#039;re entitled to be a little high-minded.  At thirty-six, DeRisi, short, thin, and hyperactive, is a rock star among molecular biologists. He runs a bustling lab at the University of California at San Francisco where, he has said, people are always &amp;quot;doing things that matter.&amp;quot; At the top of the list of those things is trying to defeat the plague of the Third World: malaria. DeRisi has focused on figuring out the genetic chain reactions in the malaria parasite&amp;#039;s life cycle. What he&amp;#039;s discovered is profound for the possibility of future cures. It appears that the parasite turns on its genes in an unwavering lockstep order. Unlike other microscopic bugs that are more adaptable, if you disrupt the malaria parasite&amp;#039;s careful genetic pattern in any way, it dies. Think of the genes acting like dominoes falling in a chain. Take out one domino and everything stops. DeRisi&amp;#039;s research should now enable someone to find a drug that takes out one domino in that deadly chain. The battle to fight malaria needs a brilliant do-gooder like DeRisi. If there was ever a disease that proved beyond a doubt that drug companies are in the business for the cash, this is it. Malaria infects 300 to 500 million people a year and kills somewhere between 700,000 and 2.7 million--mostly children--each year. Calculate the economic impact of the disease and you can see that malaria is one of the main reasons the Third World remains the Third World.  Because most of that suffering and death is visited upon poor people, there is little effort from the drug companies to advance the fundamental research that might lead to an effective cure.  DeRisi is not in research for the money. As befitting his principled life, he disdains the connection between drug development and profit. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t respect those who are in science solely for the money,&amp;quot; DeRisi has said. &amp;quot;The goal should be helping people. As a scientist, I believe you don&amp;#039;t do research for profit.&amp;quot;  True to his word, DeRisi gives most of his insights away for free. DeRisi is part of a vanguard of scientists dedicated to open-source medical research. If his noodling turns up anything useful, as it often does, he shares the information with competing researchers. DeRisi puts the instructions for many of his own protocols and technologies on his Web site and publishes his most groundbreaking work on the Web in a new open-access journal. DeRisi believes that finding solutions to complex problems is more likely if you share your ideas and insights with a network of like-minded researchers.  The approach appears to work well in advancing the basic research, but it remains to be seen whether it will be able to put effective drugs in the hands of people. Eventually someone has to be talked into running the incredibly expensive human trials, not to mention manufacturing the pills.  Besides disdaining the profit motive and giving away his best ideas willy-nilly, DeRisi embodies another countertrend in science. While some researchers sink ever deeper into their subspecialties, DeRisi is something of a Renaissance man. Aside from molecular biology, he&amp;#039;s a master of genomics, virology, computer programming, and engineering. He&amp;#039;s also a black belt in aiki jujitsu. As proof of his multidisciplinary chops, DeRisi built the virus microarray for his lab, a glass slide dotted with twelve thousand bits of DNA from all known virus families. DeRisi also designed and wrote the software for a robot dexterous enough to imprint the slide with all those little bits of genetic material.  DeRisi had barely finished the microarray two years ago when he suddenly found himself on the world stage. Health-care workers in China were dropping dead from a new and vicious respiratory ailment, and it was starting to spread. The Centers for Disease Control rushed DeRisi a sample, and in a singular moment in the history of infectious diseases, it took him only twenty-four hours to break the news to the world that a new coronavirus, SARS, was hunting humans. Did he pursue a patent for his microarray or his sure-handed little robot? Of course not. You can get his instructions to build and program your own microarray on his Web site for free (derisilab.ucsf.edu).  Along with malaria, DeRisi is also applying himself to curing cancer and the common cold. His willingness to share his insights and technology may speed up vaccine development and virus detection, which may ultimately prevent global pandemics.  Here&amp;#039;s something else you should know about Joseph DeRisi: He will not talk with Esquire magazine. According to a PR person from the University of California, DeRisi wanted nothing to do with the magazine, as it represents the &amp;quot;conspicuous consumption&amp;quot; he deplores in American culture. DeRisi did send this message: &amp;quot;I do hope thatEsquire and its advertisers will consider donations to research aimed at developing treatments for diseases, such as malaria, from which so many are dying in Third World countries.&amp;quot;  We&amp;#039;ll spread the word, Joe. 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