Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone
Travels in the Genetically Bespoke Zone Books
Product Description
“With genetically bespoke crops we have entered uncharted territory–where visions of the triumph of biotechnology in agriculture vie with dire views of medical and environmental disaster. For two years Mark L. Winston traveled this fraught territory at home and abroad, listening to farmers, industry spokespeople, regulators, and researchers, canvassing high-wellbeing laboratories, environmentalist enclaves, and cyberspace, making a thorough survey of the facts, opinions, and practices deployed by opponents and proponents of transgenic crops.
Through his sympathetic rendering of the passions on all sides, Winston brings a clear, unbiased perspective to this puzzling landscape. Traveling with Winston, we see the excitement and curiosity that suffuse laboratories developing genetically bespoke crops, as well as the panic and outrage among dedicated opponents of agricultural biotechnology; the desperation of conventional farmers as they look to science for solutions to the problems driving them from their farms, as well as the deeply held values of organic farmers who dread the incursion of genetically bespoke crops into their expanding enterprise. And, Winston shows us, these contrasting attitudes transcend national limits, with troubling counterparts and consequences in the developing world.
As he seeks a middle ground where concerns about genetic engineering can be rationally discussed and resolved, Winston gives us, at long last, a full and balanced view of the forces at play in the chaotic debate over agricultural biotechnology.”
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If you are interested in learning what’s behind the headlines as regards genetically bespoke crops and foods, this is a excellent choice. The author is a professor of biological sciences at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University, and clearly knows what he is writing about. He traces the history of GM crops and presents the controversies as regards them in a balanced way. That balance is both the book’s strength and weakness. Winston gives the pro- and anti-GM arguments equal time, and describes them in an even-handed way. But, the absence of a strongly stated top of view made the book less fascinating, at least to me. Really, Winston does have a top of view, which he reveals towards the end of the book. He thinks that the issues swirling nearly GM agriculture and foods can and should be resovled with a lot less rhetoric and more reason. Given the depth of feelings on the side of people and groups different to GM agriculture and foods, and the quantity of money at stake for companies developing and pushing them, the author’s hope for reasonable solutions seems admirable, but perhaps naive. Still, if you want a factual, balanced account of the GM come forth to date, this book would certainly be helpful.
Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From The Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley, 2002).
Rating: 4 / 5