Yoxen&Di Martino-Biotechnology in Future Society-Scenarios&O

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This is Edward Yoxen's and Vittorio Di Martino's amazing book Biotechnology in Future Society - Scenarios and Options for Europe (1989) which includes speaker's articles on the future of biotechnology from an international seminar organised by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions which is part of EU system. Biotechnology is a neologism of the mid 1970s. It connotes modernity, technological intensity, a basis in advanced research and commercialisation by sophisticated, future-oriented business enterprises. Yet its origins are ancient, extending, if one insists on tracing the lineage as far as possible, to the household procedures of food preservation, fermentation and crop selection innovated in agricultural communities up to six thousand years ago. Several participants at the seminar argued that traditional agriculture operates with standards of ecological rationality, biological diversity, and consumer satisfaction which more modern, energy- and resource-intensive production does not meet. On this view only those biotechnologies rooted in traditional expertise and connected with non-intensive, environmentally benign production should even be countenanced. Many of biotechnology's more striking technical achievements, commercial events, and policy decisions have attracted a great deal of analytic comment. Such more or less detailed reviews have been informed by different political and economic assumptions and as a result their conclusions have been correspondingly varied. Taken together this material amounts to a substantial secondary literature, comprising reports by government committees and agencies, surveys by financial institutions, and critical commentaries prepared by representatives of particular lobbies or pressure groups. In this compilation various areas of human endavour are viewed from the perspective of biotechnology such as: future pharmaceutical markets and human health care, social dimensions, case of vaccines, human genetics, food/agricultural complexes, impact of biotechnology on European agriculture, human resource planning and many more. 145 pages. A must read for everyone.

ed2k: Yoxen.&.Di.Martino.-.Biotechnology.in.Future.Society.-.Scenarios.and.Options.for....minar)(1989).pdf  [695.9 Kb] [Stats]

Please share this book with others, add links on other forums as I don't know many of them.