Biotech juggernaut : hope, hype, and hidden agendas of entrepreneurial bioscience / Tina Stevens and Stuart Newman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Acknowledgments; Prologue: A Shared Encounter; References; Chapter 1: Introduction: The Biotech Juggernaut; The Rise of the Biotech Industry; Ethics, Dissent, and the Dream of Responsible Science; The Specter of Eugenics; Technological Pragmatism Replaces Moral Concern; The Jesse Gelsinger Story: The Human Cost of Hyped Technology; The Return of Gene Therapy; The Rise of Entrepreneurial Biology: Diamond v. Chakrabarty and the Bayh-Dole Act; Commerce Eclipsing Criticism; What Is to Come (in this Book?)

(In the Future?)Notes; Sources Consulted for Chapter 1; Chapter 2: The Dawn of GM Humans; The Gene Bubble; The New Developmental Biology and Dreams of a Scientific Eugenics; Human Modification -- for Better or Worse; Sources Consulted for Chapter 2; Chapter 3: California Cloning: The Campaign; Clouding Issues at the Origin of CIRM; Enter California; Notes; Sources Consulted for Chapter 3; Chapter 4: California Cloning: The Aftermath; Conflicts of Interest in the Running of CIRM; The Egg Wars; Notes; Sources Consulted for Chapter 4; Chapter 5: Synthetic Biology: Extreme Genetic Engineering.

The Politics of Synthetic BiologyCoda; Notes; Sources Used for Chapter 5; Chapter 6: The Road to Gattaca; Paving the Road to Gattaca; Signposts Ignored: The Fallacy of Genetic Determinism; Misdirecting Signposts on the Road to Gattaca; Avoiding Gattaca?; Notes; Sources Consulted for Chapter 6; Chapter 7: Concluding Reflections; Sources Used for Chapter 7; Appendices; Appendix A: Position Paper on Human Germ Line Manipulation; Appendix B: Memo to CIRM Standards Working Group Challenging CIRM's 2013 Move to Change Egg Donation Reimbursement Policy.

Appendix C: Testimony by Sindy Wei, MD to the California Senate Health Committee re AB 926Appendix D: Testimony by Jennifer Schneider, MD to the California Senate Health Committee re AB 926; Appendix E: Testimony of Raquel Cool, Co-Founder, We Are Egg Donors, in Opposition To AB 2531; Appendix F: Email to SFSU Faculty from UCSF Center for Reproductive Health, September 21, 2017; Appendix G: Open Letter to President's Bioethics Commission from Fifty-Eight Civil Society Groups, December 16, 2010; Appendix H: Civil Society Letter to East Bay City Councils, 2011.

Appendix I: List of Civil Society Organizations Concerning Emerging BiotechnologiesGlossary; List of Abbreviations and Terms; Index.

Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype, and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience relates the intensifying effort of bioentrepreneurs to apply genetic engineering technologies to the human species and to extend the commercial reach of synthetic biology or "extreme genetic engineering." In 1980, legal developments concerning patenting laws transformed scientific researchers into bioentrepreneurs. Often motivated to create profit-driven biotech start-up companies or to serve on their advisory boards, university researchers now commonly operate under serious conflicts of interest. These conflicts stand in the way of giving full consideration to the social and ethical consequences of the technologies they seek to develop. Too often, bioentrepreneurs have worked to obscure how these technologies could alter human evolution and to hide the social costs of keeping on this path. Tracing the rise and cultural politics of biotechnology from a critical perspective, Biotech Juggernaut aims to correct the informational imbalance between producers of biotechnologies on the one hand, and the intended consumers of these technologies and general society, on the other. It explains how the converging vectors of economic, political, social, and cultural elements driving biotechnology's swift advance constitutes a juggernaut. It concludes with a reflection on whether it is possible for an informed public to halt what appears to be a runaway force.

Tina Stevens, Ph. D., is Lecturer Emerita at San Francisco State University, Department of History. She is a co-founder of Alliance for Humane Biotechnology, and the author of Bioethics in America: Origins and Cultural Politics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Stuart Newman, Ph. D., is Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at New York Medical College where he studies developmental and evolutionary biology. He was a founding member of the Council for Responsible Genetics and is co-author of Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo (Cambridge, 2005). He is editor of the journal Biological Theory (Springer).