Trading the Genome : Investigating the Commodification of Bio-Information
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Parry has a clear, incisive style...making Trading the Genome a forceful, considered and thought-provoking analysis of one of the most important issues of our time." -- Adrian Barnett, New Scientist
" Trading the Genome is strongly recommended as an eye-opener to the practices of the modern pharmaceutical industry." -- Naturalist
"This book is a welcome addition to the literature and will be a valuable resource...Well worth the read." -- Brendan Tobin, Nature
"One of Parry's major contributions is to open this rather closed world to scrutiny." -- Felix Driver, Jouranl of Historical Geography
"Maintaining a dogged grip on some very important and heretofore-unasked empirical questions, Parry leads us into ground on which it is easy to feel that no critical eye has yet gazed." -- Morgan M. Robertson, Progress in Human Geography
Book Description
Major changes in scientific, technological, and regulatory domains have fundamentally altered the way collected biological materials are used industrially. New technological artifacts are being created -- cell lines, cryogenically stored tissue samples, biochemical extracts, and even sequenced DNA stored on databases -- each of which contains highly sought after genetic and biochemical information. Able to be cloned, copied, synthesized and engineered, rented, downloaded, viewed, and exchanged, these bio-informational "proxies" may be transacted thousands of times in any given month or year. The result is an extremely lucrative, albeit largely invisible, resource economy in bio-information.
But who will benefit from this new trade? Many suppliers of the genetic and biochemical resources from which this information is drawn come from economically vulnerable developing countries. The Biodiversity Convention obliges signatory states to ensure that suppliers of genetic and biochemical resources receive "a just and equitable" share of the profits that accrue from the commercialization of their resources -- but it is not clear that they do. In a groundbreaking work that draws on anthropology, history, philosophy, business, and law, Bronwyn Parry links a firsthand investigation of the operation of the bioprospecting industry to a sophisticated analysis of broader economic, regulatory, and technological transformations: the rise of an information economy, global intellectual property rights and benefit-sharing regimes, and the progressive molecularization of approaches to biological research. Parry reveals how a failure to monitor this new global trade in bio-information could have potentially disastrous consequences for the suppliers of genetic and biochemical resources -- transforming the complex dynamics of collecting, as well as the politics and practice of biological resource exploitation.
Trading the Genome : Investigating the Commodification of Bio-Information
Trading the Genome : Investigating the Commodification of Bio-Information,Bronwyn Parry,Columbia University Press,0231121741,Bioinformatics,Biotechnology,Economics - General,General,Germplasm resources,Life Sciences - Evolution,Science,Science/Mathematics,Social aspects,Science / Biology
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