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Monday, September 27, 2010

Reviews of Books Pertaining to Genetic Engineering

The following are reviews of different articles/books related to genes and genetic engineering. Each review gives a basic summary and some general information about the book/article. Enjoy.


Aldridge, Susan. The thread of life: the story of genes and genetic engineering. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
This book is all about genes and genetic engineering and the human genome project and everything that has to do with genetic technology. It is very in depth into the process that plants and animals go through in the genetic engineering process, even down to the cellular structure. This book is very informative, but I think that it may actually be too informative for my purposes, and thus may not be appropriate for my purposes. The bias of this book is definitely supportive of genetic engineering.

Caswell, Julie A. "Labeling Policy For GMOs: To Each His Own?." AgBioForum. (2000). 25 Oct 2005 .
This source is an online journal for agrobiotechnology and contains many articles dealing with topics pertaining to genetic engineering and biotechnology. This site contains much up-to-date information that is very useful. As far as labeling, I managed to find an entire article that explains in depth what labeling of genetic engineered food is and what is involved in that process. This site has proved to be very useful to me in my research and provides much needed background information. There is no bias in this website that I can see.

“Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms.” Human Genome Project Information. 17 Sept 2004. The Human Genome Program of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. 27 Oct. 2005 .
This site is a government site sponsored by the United States. It contains a wealth of information about government policy regarding the labeling of genetically engineered food. The good thing about this site is that it does not have a bias either way in the issue, but rather presents government policy to the reader and allows him or her to make his or her own decision. This site is very useful to me in finding what the current government policy is regarding labeling.

Huffman, Wallace E., Jason F. Shogren, Matthew Rousu, and Abe Tegene. "The Value to Consumers of GM Food Labels in a Market with Asymmetric Information: Evidence from Experimental Auctions." 15 May 2001. 25 Oct 2005
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This is an online published scholarly journal written by three different professors. It contains a lot of information about labeling and is very thorough. This journal effectively addresses both sides of the argument of labeling. It provides a lot of information supporting labeling, as well as a lot of information against it. However, after reading this article, I noticed a bias toward the side that labeling is excessive and should not be implemented. This journal is very helpful to me and helps me support my argument.

Reiss, Michael J. Improving nature? : the science and ethics of genetic engineering. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
This book is mainly concerned with the morals and ethics of genetic engineering. As most books of its kind, it addresses both sides of the argument. This book does not really take a stance either way as to whether it is moral or not to genetically engineer nature. This book seems to be intended as an introduction to genetic engineering for the person who is not an expert on the issue. I rather like this book as it introduces theology into the issue and provides case studies of different relative issues. Overall, it didn’t really have a bias either way but was intended to inform, and did so.

Rifkin, Jeremy P. The Biotech Century. New York: Putnam, 1998.

This book is one of the only print sources that I’ve found to be biased towards genetic engineering. It is supporting genetic engineering. The book describes in quite a bit of detail the way that technology has advanced to the point that biotechnology can do lots of stuff never imagined, such as genetic engineering. The point of view of this book, however, talks a lot about computer and how they have impacted this technology. This is the only reason that this source may not be right for my topic.

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