John C. Sanford

John C. Sanford (born in 1950) is an American applied horticultural geneticist. Sanford graduated in 1976 from the University of Minnesota with a BSc in horticulture. He then went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he received a MSc in 1978 and a PhD in 1980 on plant breeding and genetics. Between 1980 and 1986 Sanford was an assistant professor at Cornell University, and then from 1986 to 1998 he was an associate professor. Although retiring in 1998, Sanford continues at Cornell as a courtesy associate professor. He held an honorary Adjunct Associate Professor of Botany at Duke University.

Sanford is a prolific inventor with more than 25 patents. At Cornell Sanford and Theodore Klein developed the "Biolistic Particle Delivery System" or so-called "gene gun". He is also the co-inventor of the Pathogen-derived Resistance (PDR) process and the co-inventor of the genetic vaccination process. He was given the "Distinguished Inventor Award" by the Central New York Patent Law Association in 1990 and 1995. He has founded two biotechnology companies, Sanford Scientific and Biolistics. In 1998 he retired on the proceeds from the sale of his biotech companies, but continued at Cornell as a courtesy associate professor.

Formerly an atheist, in the mid-1980s Sanford and his present wife Helen went through a marital crisis, which led him to become a born again Christian and a young earth creationist. More recently, he has written a book entitled Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome (2005) in which he claims that the genome is deteriorating and therefore could not have evolved. Sanford's claims have received little attention from the scientific community, and have not been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

An advocate of intelligent design, in 2005 Sanford testified in the Kansas evolution hearings on behalf of intelligent design, during which he denied the principle of common descent and "humbly offered ... that we were created by a special creation, by God." He also stated that he believed the age of the Earth was "Between 5[,000] and 100,000" years. An analogy Sanford uses to illustrate alleged evidence of design is that of a car versus a junkyard: "A car is complex, but so is a junkyard. However, a car is complex in a way that is very specific — which is why it works.  It requires a host of very intelligent engineers to specify its complexity, so it is a functional whole." Intelligent design proponent William Dembski touts the accomplishments of Sanford as evidence of the alleged scientific status of intelligent design and has endorsed Sanford's book, Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome. Claude Vorilhon has similarly praised the book, and has awarded Sanford an honorary priesthood in the Raëlian Movement.