The uses of life1993

"Good or bad? New or old? The rich connotations of the word 'biotechnology' reflect a history that surprisingly stretches back more than seventy years. To some, the concept describes the evolving crafts of industrial production using microorganisms. To others, biotechnology is a product of recombinant DNA techniques only recently developed by molecular biologists. It has been seen simply as a means of wealth production and as a new kind of technology - sometimes as distinctively benevolent and, at other times, as particularly dangerous." "Robert Bud shows how the hopes and fears for the combination of biology with engineering have been an integral part of the history of the twentieth century, including the Great Depression of the 1930s, the two world wars, and the more recent anxieties...