Redesigning Life: The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1856498352 ISBN 13: 9781856498357

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

Today we appear to be on the threshold of the Age of Biotechnology. Genetic engineering, animal cloning and new reproductive technologies are being promoted as the keys to a brighter future. Genetic engineers promise a more productive agriculture, wondrous medical miracles and solutions to our most pressing environmental problems. But growing numbers of farmers, scientists and concerned citizens disagree. There is growing evidence that genetically engineered foods are hazardous to our health and the environment. Farmers all over the world encounter an increasingly monopolized seed and agrichemical industry. Animal cloning and human genetic engineering raise troubling ethical questions. And genes from plants, animals and humans have become objects to bought, sold and patented by private interests. A growing worldwide resistance to genetic engineering and other new biotechnologies has brought these issues to the forefront of public controversy in many countries. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of the hidden hazards of the new genetic technologies, and the emergence of worldwide resistance. Twenty-six internationally respected critics offer their analysis of the issues, their social and ethical implications, and what people are doing in response. Redesigning Life? is essential reading for everyone who seeks to understand the full story that lies behind today's headlines.

About this title

About the Author

Brian Tokar has been an activist since the 1970s in the peace, anti-nuclear, environmental and green politics movements, and is currently a faculty member at Goddard College and the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont. He is the author of The Green Alternative: Creating an Ecological Future (1987, revised 1992) and Earth for Sale: Reclaiming Ecology in the Age of Corporate Greenwash (1997), and was the recipient of a 1999 Project Censored award for his investigative history of the Monsanto company (The Ecologist, Sept./Oct. 1998). Brian's articles on environmental politics and emerging ecological movements appear frequently in Z Magazine,The Ecologist, Food & Water Journal, Synthesis/Regeneration, Toward Freedom, and numerous other publications. He has lectured throughout the U.S., as well as internationally, and served as a consultant on technical and political aspects of environmental issues for community-based organizations on both coasts. He serves on the national boards of the Native Forest Network and the Edmonds Institute, and sat on the National Committee of the Greens/Green Party USA for several years. Brian graduated from MIT in 1976 with degrees in biology and physics and received his Masters degree in biophysics from Harvard University in 1981. He is a founder member of the Northeast Resistance Against Genetic Engineering.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zed Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1856498352
• ISBN 13: 9781856498357
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Tokar Brian