The seemingly unlimited reach of powerful biotechnologies and the
attendant growth of the multibillion-dollar industry have raised
difficult questions about the scientific discoveries, political
assumptions, and cultural patterns that gave rise to for-profit
biological research. Given such extraordinary stakes, a history of the
commercial biotechnology industry must inquire far beyond the
predictable attention to scientists, discovery, and corporate sales. It
must pursue how something so complex as the biotechnology industry was
born, poised to become both a vanguard for contemporary world capitalism
and a focal point for polemic ethical debate.
In Biotech, Eric J. Vettel chronicles the story behind genetic
engineering, recombinant DNA, cloning, and stem-cell research. It is a
story about the meteoric rise of government support for scientific
research during the Cold War, about activists and student protesters in
the Vietnam era pressing for a new purpose in science, about politicians
creating policy that alters the course of science, and also about the
release of powerful entrepreneurial energies in universities and in
venture capital that few realized existed. Most of all, it is a story
about people--not just biologists but also followers and opponents who
knew nothing about the biological sciences yet cared deeply about how
biological research was done and how the resulting knowledge was used.
Vettel weaves together these stories to illustrate how the biotechnology
industry was born in the San Francisco Bay area, examining the
anomalies, ironies, and paradoxes that contributed to its rise. Culled
from oral histories, university records, and private corporate archives,
including Cetus, the world's first biotechnology company, this
compelling history shows how a cultural and political revolution in the
1960s resulted in a new scientific order: the practical application of
biological knowledge supported by private investors expecting profitable
returns eclipsed basic research supported by government agencies.
