The promise of genetic engineering in the early 1970s to profoundly reshape the living world activated a variety of social interests in its future promotion and control. With public safety, gene patents, and the future of genetic research at stake, a wide range of interest groups competed for control over this powerful new technology. In this comparative study of the development of regulatory policy for genetic engineering in the United States and the United Kingdom, Susan Wright analyzes government responses to the struggles among corporations, scientists, universities, trade unions, and public interest groups over regulating this new field. Drawing on archival materials, government records, and interviews with industry executives, politicians, scientists, trade unionists, and others on both sides of the Atlantic, Molecular Politics provides a comprehensive account of a crucial set of policy decisions and explores their implications for the political economy of science. By combining methods from political science and the history of science, Wright advances a provocative interpretation of the evolution of genetic engineering policy and makes a major contribution to science and public policy studies.

The promise of genetic engineering in the early 1970s to profoundly reshape the living world activated a variety of social interests in its future promotion and control. With public safety, gene patents, and the future of genetic research at stake, a wide range of interest groups competed for control over this powerful new technology. In this comparative study of the development of regulatory policy for genetic engineering in the United States and the United Kingdom, Susan Wright analyzes government responses to the struggles among corporations, scientists, universities, trade unions, and public interest groups over regulating this new field. Drawing on archival materials, government records, and interviews with industry executives, politicians, scientists, trade unionists, and others on both sides of the Atlantic, Molecular Politics provides a comprehensive account of a crucial set of policy decisions and explores their implications for the political economy of science. By combining methods from political science and the history of science, Wright advances a provocative interpretation of the evolution of genetic engineering policy and makes a major contribution to science and public policy studies.

Molecular Revolution comprises a series of articles from radical French philosopher and psychoanalyst, Felix Guattari, originally published in two separate French editions, of 1977 and 1980 - each bearing the name Molecular Revolution. Despite this titular similarity, these texts differed wildly in form and content so as to become hardly recognizable. This translated single volume makes available in English for the first time an ensemble of pieces featuring an introduction by the editor, Stéphane Nadaud, and an afterword by Janell Watson. By re-arranging and re-deploying these articles, Molecular Revolution stays true to the content of Guattari's work as both a unique version and the embodiment of the essential plurality of molecular revolutions. For Guattari, rather than a theory, molecular revolutions form a practical way of doing politics, and this volume will be essential to the full comprehension of the political force of Guattari's life and work.

Encapsulating security : pharmaceutical defenses against biological danger -- Discovering a virus's achilles heel : flu fighting at molecular scale -- The pill always wins: Gilead Sciences, Roche and the birth of Tamiflu -- What a difference a day makes : the margin call for regulatory agencies -- Virtual blockbuster : bird flu and the pandemic of preparedness planning -- In the eye of the storm : global access, generics and intellectual property -- 'Ode to Tamiflu' : side effects, teenage 'suicides' and corporate liabilities -- Data backlash : Roche and Cochrane square up over clinical trial data -- 'To boldly go ... ' : pharmaceutical enterprises and global health security -- Epilogue : pharmaceuticals, security and molecular life

But today normality itself is open to medical modification.

�Should feminists clone?� �What do neurons think about?� �How can we learn from bacterial writing?� These provocative questions have haunted neuroscientist and molecular biologist Deboleena Roy since her early days of research when she was conducting experiments on an in vitro cell line using molecular biology techniques. An expert natural scientist as well as an intrepid feminist theorist, Roy takes seriously the expressive capabilities of biological �objects��such as bacteria and other human, nonhuman, organic, and inorganic actants�in order to better understand processes of becoming. She also suggests that renewed interest in matter and materiality in feminist theory must be accompanied by new feminist approaches that work with the everyday, nitty-gritty research methods and techniques in the natural sciences. By practicing science as feminism at the lab bench, Roy creates an interdisciplinary conversation between molecular biology, Deleuzian philosophies, science and technology studies, feminist theory, posthumanism, and postcolonial and decolonial studies. In Molecular Feminisms she brings insights from feminist and cultural theory together with lessons learned from the capabilities and techniques of bacteria, subcloning, and synthetic biology to o er tools for how we might approach nature anew. In the process she demonstrates that learning how to see the world around us is also always about learning how to encounter that world.

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view. Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics--not science, not common sense, and certainly not health. No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this path-breaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.