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  • Book Review
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Context, context, context! A delicate empiricism for biotechnology

Nature Biotechnology volume 26, pages 991–992 (2008)Cite this article

Beyond Biotechnology: The Barren Promise of Genetic Engineering

  • Craig Holdrege &
  • Steve Talbott
University Press of Kentucky, 2008 272 pages, cloth, $45 9780813124841 | ISBN: 978-0-8131-2484-1

Might the genome of the sloth be a potential goldmine for finding cures for youthful hyperactivity? While this proposition will strike some as a sardonic reductio ad absurdum, for many others it will simply resonate with widespread contemporary understanding and expectations. Although much of the upshot of comparative genomics has been to reveal the surprising fungibility of genetic parts across kingdoms and phyla and the concomitant significance of developmental (or 'systems') context, these insights have yet to be consolidated into a new 'vision' of nature or of the organism1. If this insightful new book receives the attention it deserves, the sloth may well become the poster child for just such a new vision.

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References

  1. Moss, L. Philosophy of Science 73, 930–946 (2006).

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  2. Habermas, J. The Future of Human Nature (Polity Press, Oxford, UK, 2003).

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  3. Moss, L. New Formations 60, 139–149 (2007).

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  4. Moss, L. Detachment, genomics and the nature of being human. in New Visions of Nature: Complexity and Authenticity (eds. Drenthen, M., Keulartz, J., Proctor, J.) (Springer International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, New York; in press).

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  1. Lenny Moss is in the Department of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, Devon EX4 4RJ, United Kingdom. lenny.moss@exeter.ac.uk,

    Lenny Moss

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  1. Lenny Moss
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Moss, L. Context, context, context! A delicate empiricism for biotechnology. Nat Biotechnol 26, 991–992 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0908-991

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