Customer Reviews

Made not Born: The Troubling World of Biotechnology

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I had to read Made not Born for a class in Biotechnology and although I liked it, I hope I will not be tested on it. Made not Born offers plenty of deep but simple analysis of biotechnological controversies - from religion to genetically modified games - which are in the forms of essays, interviews and even poems. The major ideas are sometimes repeated in the essays and interviews which further emphasizes the conclusion of the book - that we are tampering too much with nature and this process may have become irreversible. One of the greatest thing about Made not Born is that you do not have to be a biology major to understand the text.

Casey Walker has gathered intelligent and insightful essays and interviews about a technology that has arrived and has awesome implications for the future of life on earth as we know it. Having poisoned the very biological ground of our being with persistent organochlorine pollutants like dioxin, having adversely altered global climate with our fossil fuel pollution, having created nuclear wastes nobody can abide and that remain deadly for 20,000 years, corporate science is now poised to tamper with the genetic codes of life itself. Intuition should tell you this is not wise, but effective opposition requires more. Casey Walker succinctly outlines the issues at hand and the arguments that matter. This is a must read, a cogent primer, and a thought provoking tour de force.

This book is actually a reprint of an issue of a literary and political journal called Wild Duck Review which focused on biotechnology. The writing is top-notch and some of the discussion is downright scary. For example, some people have proposed the creation of a new species of human being that has an extra (24th) chromosome that would contain specially engineered genes. The so-called GenRich people could only mate with their own kind, and could not reproduce with the so-called Naturals. As author Richard Hayes notes in the book, "Few people outside the science and biotech community are aware of this." Highly recommended.