Gene Jockeys

Download or read book Gene Jockeys written by Nicolas Rasmussen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientific scramble to discover the first generation of drugs created through genetic engineering. The biotech arena emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, when molecular biology, one of the fastest-moving areas of basic science in the twentieth century, met the business world. Gene Jockeys is a detailed study of the biotech projects that led to five of the first ten recombinant DNA drugs to be approved for medical use in the United States: human insulin, human growth hormone, alpha interferon, erythropoietin, and tissue plasminogen activator. Drawing on corporate documents obtained from patent litigation, as well as interviews with the ambitious biologists who called themselves gene jockeys, historian Nicolas Rasmussen chronicles the remarkable, and often secretive, work of the scientists who built a new domain between academia and the drug industry in the pursuit of intellectual rewards and big payouts. In contrast to some who critique the rise of biotechnology, Rasmussen contends that biotech was not a swindle, even if the public did pay a very high price for the development of what began as public scientific resources. Within the biotech enterprise, the work of corporate scientists went well beyond what biologists had already accomplished within universities, and it accelerated the medical use of the new drugs by several years. In his technically detailed and readable narrative, Rasmussen focuses on the visible and often heavy hands that construct and maintain the markets in public goods like science. He looks closely at how science follows money, and vice versa, as researchers respond to the pressures and potential rewards of commercially viable innovations. In biotechnology, many of those engaged in crafting markets for genetically engineered drugs were biologists themselves who were in fact trying to do science. This book captures that heady, fleeting moment when a biologist could expect to do great science through the private sector and be rewarded with both wealth and scientific acclaim.

Download or read book Agricultural Research written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Recombinant University written by Doogab Yi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-03-23 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title examines the history of biotechnology when it was new, especially when synonymous with recombinant DNA technology. It focuses on the academic community in the San Francisco Bay Area where recombinant DNA technology was developed and adopted as the first major commercial technology for genetic engineering at Stanford in the 1970s. The book argues that biotechnology was initially a hybrid creation of academic and commercial institutions held together by the assumption of a positive relationship between private ownership and the public interest.

Download or read book Dinner at the New Gene Café written by Bill Lambrecht and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive book on the rise of biotechnology and genetic modification in the world's food supply, a growing topic of fierce international debate. Biotech companies are racing to alter the genetic building blocks of the world's food. In the United States, the primary venue for this quiet revolution, the acreage of genetically modified crops has soared from zero to 70 million acres since 1996. More than half of America's processed grocery products-from cornflakes to granola bars to diet drinks-contain gene-altered ingredients. But the U.S., unlike Europe and other democratic nations, does not require labeling of modified food. Dinner at the New Gene Café expertly lays out the battle lines of the impending collision between a powerful but unproved technology and a gathering resistance from people worried about the safety of genetic change. "Should be required reading for anyone who eats" --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Download or read book Cloning Human Beings written by United States. National Bioethics Advisory Commission and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Generic written by Jeremy A. Greene and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The turbulent history of generic pharmaceuticals raises powerful questions about similarity and difference in modern medicine. Generic drugs are now familiar objects in clinics, drugstores, and households around the world. We like to think of these tablets, capsules, patches, and ointments as interchangeable with their brand-name counterparts: why pay more for the same? And yet they are not quite the same. They differ in price, in place of origin, in color, shape, and size, in the dyes, binders, fillers, and coatings used, and in a host of other ways. Claims of generic equivalence, as physician-historian Jeremy Greene reveals in this gripping narrative, are never based on being identical to the original drug in all respects, but in being the same in all ways that matter. How do we know what parts of a pill really matter? Decisions about which differences are significant and which are trivial in the world of therapeutics are not resolved by simple chemical or biological assays alone. As Greene reveals in this fascinating account, questions of therapeutic similarity and difference are also always questions of pharmacology and physiology, of economics and politics, of morality and belief. Generic is the first book to chronicle the social, political, and cultural history of generic drugs in America. It narrates the evolution of the generic drug industry from a set of mid-twentieth-century "schlock houses" and "counterfeiters" into an agile and surprisingly powerful set of multinational corporations in the early twenty-first century. The substitution of bioequivalent generic drugs for more expensive brand-name products is a rare success story in a field of failed attempts to deliver equivalent value in health care for a lower price. Greene’s history sheds light on the controversies shadowing the success of generics: problems with the generalizability of medical knowledge, the fragile role of science in public policy, and the increasing role of industry, marketing, and consumer logics in late-twentieth-century and early twenty-first century health care.

Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Kaiju written by Sean Wallace and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2016-01-14 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giant monsters whose every roar and footstep shakes the earth, whose simple stroll through a city wreaks havoc: KAIJU! And even though humankind has never really seen such monsters - we tremble at the thought of them and love to shiver as their screen versions make mayhem: the beast from twenty-thousand fathoms, Godzilla demolishing Tokyo, the massive creature in Cloverfield destroying New York, all of Earth warring with the colossal monsters in Pacific Rim. Now, for the first time, a definitive anthology that gathers a wide range of larger-than-life short fiction with creatures that run a gargantuan gamut: the stealthy gabbleduck of Neal Asher's Polity universe; Gary McMahon's huge sea-born terror; An Owomoyela 's incredibly tall alien invaders; Frank Wu's city-razing, eighty-foot-high, fire-breathing lizard; Lavie Tidhar's titanic ship-devouring monstrosity; a really big Midwest US smackdown related by Jeremiah Tolbert . . . and many more mega-monster stories to feed your need for killer kaiju! With an introduction by Robert Hood, co-editor of the groundbreaking, Ditmar Award-winning Daikaiju: Giant Monster Tales and host of Undead Backbrain, the premier website for matters relating to giant monsters.