Fernando Orrego is a native of Santiago, Chile, where he earned an MD from the University of Chile, where he became professor of physiology and biophysics. He is also a former research associate, with Nobel Prize winner Fritz Lipmann at Rockefeller University, a former head of the department of biochemistry at The National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico, and was a fellow of the US Public Health Service and Guggenheim Foundation. He is a Miguel Otero prizewinner, and his contributions to medicine and humanism earned him the Albert Schweitzer medal.

Orrego is the author of ninety-nine scientific publications, including Darwin's Illness: A Final Diagnosis, The Personal Life of Charles Darwin, and John Paul II and the Theory of Evolution.