Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
Issues and Dilemmas of Biotechnology, A Reference Guide by Bernice Schacter Greenwood Press: Westport, CT, 1999. 224 pages. ISBN 0-313-30642-7. $45.00. reviewed by Linda M. Sweeting
Today’s chemistry graduates need a very broad education to enable them to apply chemistry to a wide variety of fields. Some will develop new structural materials and others new ways to prevent and treat disease. Many of the new approaches to human disease involve genetic manipulation of organisms from bacteriophages to humans, manipulations which may have long-term consequences for the future of the earth. Thus it is important that chemistry students be familiar with both technical and moral issues in both biotechnology and chemistry. Several of us chemistry faculty have developed courses in ethics in science to accomplish these educational goals. As we do, we all find that our knowledge of the technology and the ethical issues is lacking in areas outside of the traditional chemistry boundaries, especially the interfaces with biology and medicine. Consequently, primers on these topics are of great value. Unfortunately, most of the books on issues in biotechnology are collections of readings, with large conceptual gaps between the individual selections. A book by a single author providing perspective on both the technical and the moral issues is very much needed. Bernice Schachter has set out to provide such a primer on biotechnology. She manages to describe most of the science and the issues it raises in fewer than 200 pages of text—a remarkable feat of restraint and economy. The intended audience is not described in the book, but she thanks her students in the “Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Dartmouth College for teaching me how to communicate this material”. The publisher’s flyer calls the book a “unique reference source for advanced high school students and teachers”. So who would be an appropriate audience? Since the first chapter in the book summarizes the basic biochemistry of genetics, one might expect that the book can be read and understood without knowing much biochemistry or molecular biology beforehand. However, a lot of important terms are introduced without definition, such as bacteriophage (p 11), vector (p 82) and germ-line (p 141). Most are eventually defined—vector, for example, on p 130. Thus interested readers would need access to a molecular biologist or molecular biology text if they had not already had some exposure to the science. On the other hand, abbreviations are consistently defined on their first appearance, and a helpful list of abbreviations translates AAV … ZP at the front of the book. The terminology will be pretty overwhelming for a novice, but most of the students in my undergraduate Professional Ethics for Scientists course would be able to read and understand this book because most have taken modern biology courses.
edited by
Jeffrey Kovac University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
The recommendations for further reading in each chapter are at various levels, newspaper articles and Science and Nature essays dominating over more technical papers and books. A list of Web pages is also provided. Schacter has managed to pack an amazing amount of information into this short book. The science and technology dominates and is very much up to date. For example, the chapter on genetically engineered (Bt) corn includes the finding that monarch butterfly caterpillars dining on milkweed dusted with Bt corn pollen have shorter lives those that dine on milkweed without Bt. The discussions of issues are largely integrated into each chapter. Although fewer words are dedicated to discussing issues and dilemmas overall, they are clearly central to the book. For example, Chapter 2 is a discussion of the Asilomar Conference of 1975, in which researchers in recombinant DNA met to set limits on their research activities to ensure safety. Chapter 3 discusses legal issues in the patenting of living organisms, a theme that is picked up again in later chapters on the human genome project and cloning. Schacter is clearly fascinated by the wheeling and dealing between the biotech companies, and her text and tabular summaries of techniques often include dollar costs or ownership and licencing arrangements. This interest will surely be appreciated by student readers. Schacter has incorporated case studies into the book to introduce 6 of the 11 chapters. For example, a farmer considering what to plant introduces the chapter Corn Genetically Engineered with an Insecticide, and a young woman whose mother is recovering from breast cancer introduces the chapter Genetic Testing for Risk Assessment for Disease. These chapters explain the science and return to the protagonist’s decision toward the end. This approach brings the “issues and dilemmas” to life for the reader and provides a welcome change of pace in the text. However, the approach also means that the range of subjects covered in the chapter is reduced; for example, genetic screening for diseases other than breast cancer is not discussed, even though other diseases have a stronger genetic component. I found little to quibble about in the content, although I was startled by “cancer is … a genetic disease" (p 101). To most readers, that statement means that cancer is inherited. The subsequent discussion of DNA damage and inherited susceptibility clarifies the statement, but completely neglects the fact that all of us are probably susceptible to the most powerful carcinogens and the fact that only “5–10 percent of tumors show evidence of a familial pattern” (p 102). I found the book informative and would recommend it to my students; however, it suffers somewhat from inadequate editing, setting a poor example for students. There are very few typographical errors, but grammatical errors that interfere significantly with meaning are annoyingly numerous. In some cases the meaning is reversed by poor construction, such as a lack of parallelism: “fewer plants from Bt corn seed showed ECB injury and fewer larvae per plant” (p 57), “the use of BGH is not significant and undetectable” (p 64). Antecedents are often vague: “This is where the slippery slope idea comes
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in” (p 142). And the long strings of adjectives common in biotechnology such as “adult differentiated tissue derived nuclear” (p 175) need hyphens or commas, depending on the intended meaning. I also recommend the book to the readers of this Journal to provide a base for discussing these issues with the biology majors you teach and with your colleagues in molecular biology. Schacter clarified many technical and practical issues for me, such as the potential usefulness of generating embryos by somatic cell nuclear transfer and the difference between this process and true cloning. I particularly appreciated the measured evaluation of the current products of genetic
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engineering—Bt corn, bovine growth hormone, testing for BRCA-1 and -2, and forensic use of DNA fingerprinting. Schacter has not succumbed to the temptation to exaggerate either the success or the dangers of biotechnology, but has pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of the methods as part of her commitment to provide readers with the technical base to make their own judgments if and when the situation arises. The book should provide a welcome antidote to both the hype and the panic surrounding advances in biotechnology. Linda M. Sweeting is in the Department of Chemistry, Towson University, Baltimore, MD 21252;
[email protected].
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 77 No. 10 October 2000 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
