The biotech century

Jeremy Rifkin notes that after more than forty years of running on parallel tracks, the information and life sciences are fusing into a single powerful technological and economic force that is laying the foundation for the Biotech Century.

Our way of life, says Rifkin, is likely to be transformed more fundamentally in the next few decades than in the previous thousand years. Food and fiber may be grown indoors in giant bacteria baths, partially eliminating the farmer and the soil for the first time in history. Animal and human cloning could be commonplace, with "replication" increasingly replacing "reproduction." Millions of people could obtain a detailed genetic readout of themselves, allowing them to gaze into their own biological futures and predict and plan their lives in ways never before possible. Parents may choose to have their children gestated in artificial wombs outside the human body. Genetic changes could be made in human fetuses to correct deadly diseases and disorders and enhance mood, behavior, intelligence, and physical traits. The new genetic commerce raises more troubling questions than any other economic revolution in history. Rifkin explores these and many other critical issues in this book about the coming era.