Genetics
Brand-New Bird: How Two Amateur Scientists Created the First
Genetically Engineered Animal
Author:
Birkhead, Tim
Isbn 13:
9780465006656
ISBN: 0465006655
Pub Date:
Sep 1, 2003
Publisher:
Perseus Books
Shipping Weight: 1.30 pounds
Status:
Ships 3-8 days call rush ship
Quantum Price: $21.00
Quantity in Basket: None
Long before Dolly the Sheep or transgenic mice or bioengineered corn, there was the red canary - the first genetically engineered organism, back in 1920s Germany. When high school teacher Hans Duncker met shopkeeper Karl Reich on the streets of Bremen, they seemed to have little in common. Their friendship - one that started over the arresting song of a canary that sounded mysteriously like a nightingale - soon became a partnership, in an esoteric quest to create a new bird: a red canary. The hunt for the red canary invoked all of the deep issues that trouble genetic engineering decades later: the nature of genes and how they work, the specter of eugenics, and the relative roles of nature and nurture in determining how an organism takes shape. Propelled by his considerable scientific authority, Tim Birkhead has woven an astonishing story of men who brought all the desperate desire of the human enterprise to bear in trying to create a genetically perfected bird at a time when others were obsessed with the idea of the genetically perfect man. The result is an enlightening and cautionary tale of insights and blind ambition. Carl Safina
view
more info, including table of contents
(opens in pop-up window)
