Engineer In The Garden

Description

This study details the various results that can be achieved from tampering with genetic material from ensuring the birth of a male rather than a female child, creating a cow with a vast milk yield, or creating mice that are programmed to die of cancer. The author indicates that already farmers release genetically re-shaped plants into the fields to produce nicer-looking apples, and that whole species of animals can be saved from extinction by genetic techniques. However, the book questions whether the geneticists actually know what they are doing, or are they just following their noses, as did our ancestors, when they developed fire and the axe and destroyed the forests. "The Engineer in the Garden" has been shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc Science Book prize.

Science writer Colin Tudge was born on 22 April 1943 in London, and was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist and was features editor for New Scientist magazine between 1980 and 1984, before joining the BBC where he worked on science programmes for BBC Radio, presenting the regular programme 'Spectrum'. He is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Times, Natural History and the New Statesman. He is a former member of the Council of The Zoological Society of London and since 1995 has been a visiting Research Fellow of the Centre for Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Two of his books have been shortlisted for the COPUS/Rhone Poulence Science Book of the Year- Last Animals at the Zoo (1991) and The Engineer in the Garden (1993). The Day Before Yesterday (1995) won the B.P. Conservation Book of the Year Award. His latest book is The Secret Life of Trees (2005).

The Engineer in the Garden is an engagingly quirky and broadly informed account of modern genetics, heredity and evolution that teems with the latest facts, briskly and brightly conveyed... If you are concerned about the genetic future, you could do no better than to read this wise and thoughtful book. * Sunday Telegraph * In his excellent account of what we are about to let ourselves in for, Colin Tudge unravels the mysteries of genetic engineering and its applications with great skill. * Daily Telegraph * A mammoth task at which he succeeds admirably. * Economist * Could not be bettered as a popular introduction to genetic knowledge. * Independent on Sunday *