BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World

by Michael Fumento

Book Overview

Michael Fumento discusses the miracle drugs and treatment in the pipeline--innovations that will change medicine over the next decades, eliminating diseases such as diabetes.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1893554759
• ISBN13: 9781893554757
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Length: 510 Pages
• Weight: 1.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A realistic and optimistic apology for biotechnology

Every facet of biotechnology is fascinating, and even those embedded in it as scientist, engineer, or technican are always surprised at the rapid advancements in it that are now taking place. The biological world is an enormously complex picture puzzle, the pieces of which, thanks to powerful computational machines, advanced mathematics, and artificial intelligence, are just beginning to be fitted together. Once thought of as a purely descriptive science, biology is now quantitative, and engineers, physicists, and mathematicians are moving into it with great zeal. Readers of all backgrounds will obtain an overview of the breathtaking advances in biotechnology in this book. It is fortunate that the author is not a sycophant for the biotechnology industry, but instead gives a sound apology for it, supported by scholarly evidence and references. Indeed, the book contains 147 pages of references and hyperlinks for the reader to consult if needed. Even if the reader does not have a background in biology or genetics, the presentation is detailed enough that such a reader can obtain the much needed insight into the powerful role that biotechnology will play in the twenty-first century. Biotechnology, via transgenic strategies and other techniques in genetic engineering, has permuted the natural world, and has produced animals and plants that have surpassed, and will greatly surpass, any of the dreams of science fiction. Even more importantly, as is brought out in detail by the author, these animals and plants are bringing new ways to feed hungry populations and heal the sick. The human imagination is challenged by these discoveries, and no doubt will be even more so in the near future, as biotechnology continues its unrelenting advance. Indeed, one reads of spider genes inserted in goats, producing silk in their udders, and giving us ample amounts of the strongest fiber yet known. The benefits? Tissue repair, artificial tendons, and body armor for soldiers, to name a few the author mentions... the creation of transgenic mice that secrete human growth hormone in their ejaculate...eggs of transgenic chickens that have fourteen proteins....the list goes on and on. A perusal of his references reveals many more. The database of new animals and plants keeps growing and growing. The author is fair in his assessment of viable biotechnologies, cautions against "science by press release", utopianism, and alerts the reader to the legal issues that confront the use of the different biotechnologies. His confidence and optimism though are refreshing and inspiring. He ends his book with the following words: "The process has begun and it's accelerating. The ultimate benefits are unimaginable, while the near-term ones are incredible. Hold onto the bar in front of you and don't stand up. We're in for one heck of thrill ride."He's right!

Hope for the future, in general...and my own!

BioEvolution is a superb book! I have a progressive form of MS, and due to both my disease and my location, keep up with some of the progress in this arena. Just how Mr. Fumento does keep on top of pretty much all biotechnological developments is an awe-inspiring mystery. I found his sources and footnotes, as always, completely trustworthy. His interpretation of those sources is "wildly accurate", at least in my very humble opinion! I have many times nearly given up any hope of cure for my own and others' diseases, but BioEvolution presents a different future for "us afflictees"--and Mr. Fumento often is more conservative than most in his "predictions". BioEvolution is a book of hope--hope that will come to be. I keep my copy on my dresser and re-read it frequently. Definitely a must-read!

A Real World Yellow-Brick Road!

Michael Fumento's proof-based approach is totally fresh, based on actual events and current research, not opinionated rhetoric or a personal or political agenda. That in itself, is rare, as so many narrow and selfish outside agendas pollute the biotech environment, making it difficult, if not impossible, to separate fact from fancy, opportunity from caution, or even completed research and testing from deliberate misinformation. Conversely, Mr. Fumento's examples are fully documented, even to the extent of a fully documented bibliography section, including names and email contact addresses for both scientific researchers and their corporate or research entities. This alone sets the book well apart, as the reader is provided with documentation that allows evidence to take precedence over opinion or skepticism. Mr. Fumento accepts the challenge of anti-biotech activism without prejudice, patiently addressing even the more ill-founded of objections with care and attention. Biotech objections and concerns are addressed in detail, not dismissed, a plus not often attributable to anti-biotech proponents. This is a book related to the rapid growth of modern scientific achievement, but it is as fair and even-handed as I have ever encountered, even though it is optimistic. In short, Mr. Fumento's well organized work is a masterpiece of good research, excellent writing, magnificently argued reason, honest compassion, and personal courage. Beyond such rare attributes, he has done a great and I hope, enduring, service to millions of us, readers or not, perhaps billions of people most of us will never meet or who will never know that Mr. Fumento was their benefactor. Moreover, because of his passion for the material inadequacies of less affluent others, we may discover that he has helped to shorten the time frame in which we will continue to read about starvation, malnutrition, avoidable disease, blindness and premature death, all stiking the least able to care for themselves; children. People who better inform themselves by reading Bio Evolution will find themselves to be well fortified to separate the 'blue sky' of biotech from its achievable promise. For both the reader predisposed to rational argument or for the confirmed prior opponent of biotech, Mr. Fumento presents an approach to that must be confronted without prejudice, certainly not dismissed as biotech propaganda. Read it and form your own opinion on what is certain to change your life. It is an exciting book, and one which responsible citizens will find rewarding. Walton Cook, author of Buzzword, biotech novel.

Keeping up with the Biotech World

This book is brilliant, incisive, and oh-my-gosh is it informative! I'm not the world's biggest science fan. (In fact, I'm more into novels.) But this book grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I couldn't believe all of these things going around me were biotech, such as the breast cancer drug Herceptin. I knew that there are now drugs that actually treat autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis rather than merely relieving symptoms, but I had no idea they were grown from proteins spliced into cells from something called a Chinese Hamster. Nor did I have any idea that such drugs are becoming the new "aspirins," with the same medicine treating diseases like both rheumatoid arthritis and cancer that seemingly have nothing in common with each other.In addition to medicine, the book looks at current and future gene-spliced crops and again I was amazed at the progress that's being made. Fumento takes the example of a single crop, rice, and shows how genes from this plant or that fungi can (and eventually will) be spliced into it rice to make it higher-yielding, more nutritious, and more resistant to bad temperature and weather conditions - all without chemicals.The third part of the book - after medicines and crops - concerns "bioremediation." Essentially this means cleaning up toxic waste and other forms of pollution not through horribly expensive and destructive methods such as shoveling up dirt and burning it but rather through encouraging nature to do the job. This could mean using trees, bushes, fungi, or bacteria. As with the other areas of the book, these things are being used right now but Fumento takes us out five to ten years to see the miracles waiting in the wings. With new developments coming as fast as he says, I hope he's already at work on a BioEvolution sequel!

Sick with scaremongering news? Here's the antidote.

You may often find science and medical news depressing. Not a day passes without one or several media scares, all screaming about imminent dangers that will adversely affect your health or even your survival. What can you do to clear this terrible feeling of despair off your mind? Try BioEvolution by Michael Fumento.This book will give you a dose of reality you probably haven't heard much about - but should. As Fumento notes, biotech won't solve all of our problems but it has amazing potential to cure diseases for which we currently don't even have treatments, to feed a growing worldwide population with less land and fewer chemicals, to clean up our waterways and contaminated factory sites, and to transform our lives in wonderful ways we can barely imagine.Right off you'll discover that biotech will produce unbelievable advances in medicine such as more effective vaccines for diseases like malaria, genital herpes, hepatitis C, cancer, the works. The only hope for an AIDS vaccine is biotech. And would you believe that you may be vaccinated against hepatitis, E. coli, and diseases that cause fatal diarrhea by eating a piece of fruit or a potato? There will be drugs that will zero in on tumors without attacking other cells. Like baldness and impotence remedies, treatments for aging are already moving out of the realm of quackery. Biotech will soon be used to extend both lifespans and the quality of life dramatically. Animal tests have shown incredible lifespan extensions of 50 percent or more!If that is not enough to get you out of that funk, take a look at what's happening in agriculture. Gene engineering is already leading to miracle crops, in which the pesticide isn't sprayed on but rather built into the plants. That way the only bugs harmed are those that eat the crop itself. Soon we'll have plants that grow in temperatures and soils that today won't tolerate anything colored green. If those soils are contaminated with chemicals and heavy metals, biotech bacteria and plants will chow down on them like starving gamblers at a Las Vegas buffet.This book will make you much more optimistic about the world's future - and yours! Perhaps the single best aspect is that virtually everybody reading BioEvolution will still be alive when many of the miracles described therein come to pass. It is also a treasure trove of information, but if you want even more there are enough citations at the end to provide you with biotech reading material for the rest of your life - or at least until you're 130, which you probably will be.