Customer Reviews

Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States

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The author deserves much recognition for this thorough selection, summary and interpretation of a mess of data.
Though, I see two limits to her work, which are probably connected to each other.

First, she does not state clearly her thesis. Or better, yes she does, but only to follow it up with
a limited series of contingent proofs or, worse, of non-convincing facts and exceptions. The speech is fuzzy, sometimes self-contradicting and difficult
to follow. For sure there's no didactic worry and the author seems to write, to digest, for herself rather than for the reader.
E.g., her thesis would be that in the USA, UK and GER the subject of biotechnology has been addressed in much
different ways (e.g. OGM approached as "product", "process", "program"), but then, if you read carefully, you realize
that the thesis is too much a forcing of facts within that picture and that the author seems to ignore it.
Just a second example: as a proof of the differences among the three countries policies,
she tells that their policies did not eventually converge on the same result, as economists would have predicted instead.
Her proof for this is that the three countries DID actually converge (OGM labels on food), but
not on what the USA would have liked (no label at all). Well, as for me, I would call that nothing less than a convergence indeed!

Secondly, the subject is perhaps too much a piece of very recent history, and that makes difficult to read it
in perspective, choosing the best working key of interpretation. Before to see a clear trend in how democracy
has played a role in this, we'll have perhaps to wait for a long time.

It's a book which is worth reading only if you are ready to do A LOT of work on it (reading it many, many times)
and to eventually put it back on the shelve without having gained a steady grasp of the real meaning of the subject, but just a collection of
single historical events and a few out-of-focus, under-construction, weak thesis to read them.
As a last remark, I have to say that I did not read the original edition, but the italian translation.

Great overview of the most crtical issue confronting the world today undertaken in the context of current socio-political systems and the real power behind them. Highly recommended.