Private Science: Biotechnology and the Rise of the Molecular Sciences(Chemical Sciences in Society)

The word "Biotechnologie," used to describe technology based on biological raw materials, was coined in Hungary in 1917 by Karl Ereky, who met the threat of wartime famine by intensive fattening of huge numbers of pigs. Today, 250 public companies and perhaps another thousand privately held corporations are represented by the Biotechnology Industry Organization-all of them in the business of altering the genetic make-up of living things-and their activities have become the subject of vigorous debate among scholars, policymakers, and numerous other groups. Private Science is a contribution to that debate, focusing particularly on the relationships among corporations, universities, and national governments involved in biotechnological research. Essays in this collection examine the political and economic operations of the biotechnology industry and place those operations in historical context, tracing the history of both the institutional frameworks within which they developed and the ideas, attitudes, and language which shaped, and continue to shape, their development. The twelve essays in the volume focus on the relationships among corporations, universities, and national governments involved in biotechnological research. They examine the political and economic operations of the industry and place those operations in historical context, tracing the history of the institutional frameworks within which they evolved as well as the ideas, attitudes, and language which shaped, and continue to shape their development.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Molecular Biology and the Long-Term History of Biotechnology 2. Problematizing Basic Research in Molecular Biology 3. Biotechnology and Blood: Edwin Cohn's Plasma Fractionation Project, 1940-1953 4. Diamond v. Chakrabarty and Beyond: The Political Economy of Patenting Life 5. Molecular Politics in a Global Economy 6. The Political Economy of British Biotechnology 7. Biotechnology and the Creation of a New Economic Space 8. The Cultural and Symbolic Dimensions of Agricultural Biotechnology 9. Monoclonal Antibodies: From Local to Extended Networks 10. The Human Genome Project and the Acceleration of Biotechnology 11. Data Access Policy in Genome Research 12. Biotechnology's Private Parts (and Some Public Ones) Index Contributors Acknowledgments

About the Author :
Edited by Arnold Thackray

Review :
"The shift from brewing to biotech has excited historians nearly as much as investors. In Private Science, Arnold Thackray brings together most of the important writers in the field to show how biotech is shaped by economic and institutional interests. For specialists, but others should enjoy dipping in."--New Scientist