Private science
Subtitle: biotechnology and the rise of the molecular sciences
By: edited by Arnold Thackray.
Contributors: Thackray, Arnold, 1939-
Series: The Chemical sciences in society series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 268
Subjects: Biotechnology -- History.; Biotechnology -- Political aspects.; Biotechnology -- Social aspects.; Biotechnology industries.
Description: The word "Biotechnologie," used to describe technology based on biological raw materials, was coined in Hungary in 1917 by Karl Ereky, who met the threat of wartime famine by intensive fattening of huge numbers of pigs.

Today, 250 public companies and perhaps another thousand privately held corporations are represented by the Biotechnology Industry Organization - all of them in the business of altering the genetic make-up of living things - and their activities have become the subject of vigorous debate among scholars, policymakers, and numerous other groups.

Private Science is a contribution to that debate, focusing particularly on the relationships among corporations, universities, and national governments involved in biotechnological research.

Essays in this collection examine the political and economic operations of the biotechnology industry and place those operations in historical context, tracing the history of both the institutional frameworks within which they developed and the ideas, attitudes, and language which shaped, and continue to shape, their development.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.