Scientists claim ordinary folks can’t be trusted to weigh the pros and cons of transgenics – swapping genes from one species to another. They know nothing about genetics (too overwhelmed by the “yuck factor”) and even less about risk assessment (numbers are hard). The problem, Denise Caruso argues in Intervention, is that scientists don’t know much about them, either.
Caruso isn’t some wild-eyed anti-science protestor. A former columnist forThe New York Times, she specializes in how new technology reaches the market. In Intervention, she examines how haphazardly transgenic organisms are being developed and have already been unleashed into the environment. A freely admitted generalist, her surprisingly approachable book is not a stats lesson on risk analysis, or a genetics primer. Instead, she asks what criteria scientists, regulators, and businesses use to make their decisions. What she finds is that the benefits of transgenics are almost an article of faith, with surprisingly little scientific or economic research to back it up. As she quotes Craig Venter, former president of Celera Genomics and a member of the human genome project, “My view of biology is, we don’t know shit.”
Continue reading Review: Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet by Denise Caruso →
There’s a moment of sadness with every new Terry Pratchett novel. Since the English comedy-fantasy author’s 2007 announcement that he has Alzheimer’s disease, he’s admitted that each book may be his last. He’s undoubtedly bringing one part of his legacy to a bittersweet conclusion with the final tale of Tiffany Aching, the young witch on the mystical planet called Discworld. Across the first three books in the sequence of young adult novels (The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith), Tiffany went from callow apprentice to respected hag o’ the hills.
