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As host of public radio’s popular Tech Nation, former NASA scientist and engineer Moira Gunn might have seemed like a natural to tackle the rigors of biotechnology. But biotech, with its folding proteins, nanocrystals, and even gorilla sperm, made her feel like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole. So she tiptoed around it… until she fell right in.
Welcome to BioTech Nation is a fascinating, fast-paced account of Gunn’s accidental plunge into the “biotech rabbit hole." Combining a first-person chronicle of the jittery beginnings of the weekly radio segment Biotech Nation with her trademark entertaining and penetrating reporting, Gunn uncovers the inner workings of a little-understood industry in the midst of explosive growth and with far-reaching impact. You’ll learn about some of the exciting developments happening to biotech today -- viruses that kill tumor cells, enzymes that produce cost-effective ethanol -- along with behind-the-scenes portraits of the driven, arrogant, and visionary movers and shakers of this global industry.
And Welcome to Biotech Nation doesn’t shy away from the controversies. You’ll be both thrilled and startled as you read about promising new innovations through the lens of pressing ethical questions, where the dissemination of life-enhancing medicines is pitted against the push for corporate profit... where extraordinary yields from genetically modified seeds are weighed against their surreptitious introduction into the American food supply… where federally funded medical research is confined to a handful of stem cell lines that are steadily being lost.
Sometimes wildly promising, sometimes deeply troublesome, biotech is an industry that cannot be ignored. Welcome to BioTech Nation is the most entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking guide to biotechnology today... and a glimpse at what could be in store for us tomorrow.
Nora A. Gunn, Ph.D., is the host of BioTech Nation, and Tech Nation, which air weekly on 200 public radio stations, on NPR channels on Sirius Satellite Radio, and internationally to 133 countries via American Forces Radio International. A former NASA computer scientist with a doctorate in mechanical engineering and a patent in human nutrition research, she has recently been named a Science Laureate for her contributions to science journalism. She lives in San Francisco, California, which she recently noticed was ten minutes from the world’s largest biotech cluster.
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