Andrews and Nelkin have done a good job of describing the burgeoning field of biotechnology in layman's terms. Although redundant at times, the authors get right down to the nitty-gritty on issues of tissue marketing, genetic manipulation, assisted reproduction, embryonic research, cloning and other current topics. The book also explores the ethical issues of these rapidly expanding fields, which is particularly relevant in view of the money to be made on lucrative discoveries by researchers and companies who place the bottom line above human rights. This book is recommended for anyone who wants to know about DNA but is afraid to ask.

If you took a human being and dismantled the body into its elements of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and the rest, you would get a collection of pure chemicals that used to estimated as worth 89 cents. That's what you get if you take all the information and structure away. Information and structure within our bodies are worth something, and are worth more and more every day as we are able to understand them better. And here's a disturbing thought: someone else may own those particular details on your own particular body. And sell them.

According to Lori Andrews and Dorothy Nelkin, in their troubling book _Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age_ (Crown Publications), that's happening often. It happened to John Moore, who about fifteen years ago was being treated by a specialist for hairy-cell leukemia. As you can imagine, such treatment required a lot of tests on Mr. Moore's body, but it seemed to Moore that there were too many going on, and that the doctor was secretive, and insistent that the blood, and then bone marrow and skin and semen, had to be obtained at his own lab. Moore investigated, and found that he had become patent number 4,438,032. The doctor had found that there were certain unique chemicals in Moore's blood, and the pharmaceutical company Sandoz had reportedly paid $15 million for the right to develop a cell line taken from Moore. The doctor seems to have said that he had found a "gold mine" in Moore, and Moore indeed felt he had been "harvested." So, of course, Moore sued for property theft. In 1990, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the doctor, saying in effect that Moore didn't own his body parts, but the ones who discovered and patented them did.

Author Andrews is a legal scholar and bioethicist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Nelkin is a New York University professor of law. They offer many other troubling examples of what we would intuitively regard as people's rights to their own body chemistry being smashed for the profits of gene-hunters and corporations.

Issues of genes are not the only problems covered in this worrisome book, which is an excellent introduction into a world we are just now making for ourselves. It also considers such things as the ownership of bodies which are prepared for artistic display; the Korean Ear Mound in Kyoto, Japan, a collection of body trophies from the Japanese-Korean War four hundred years ago; and the web sales of a firm called Skulls Unlimited. The genetic issues, because of their novelty, are certainly the most enigmatic, and the authors quite rightly raise questions about non-medical issues such as DNA typing of criminals, military people, or minorities to go into a computer whose usage may be unlimited. It is perhaps regrettable that the final chapter of the book, where one would expect intelligent recommendations for solutions, is only seven pages long, and contains more questions than answers. That is, I suppose, only because the book is one of the first calls to look at a new and serious ethical, scientific, and corporate problem. Perhaps we will have answers in the future, but it is a strange territory we are traveling through, and it is clear that we need somehow to change the road we are on.

I bought this book after hearing Lori speak at a forum at the University of Washington. While this is a book primarily about public policy (what our government should do about making laws covering genetic testing), it covers all aspects of genetics, from a history of genetic testing to the ways in which genetic testing information have been used and abused in our society. I came away worried about our future but hopeful that we could use the new information that genetic testing provides, without considering it the end of the line. Genetics are one piece of information that need to be considered along with ethics, other medical information, and personal beliefs.

Many books on genetics only address issues of interest to scientists or ethical studies programs: Future Perfect outlines some issues and solutions for individuals making decisions based on genetic testing and facts, providing the first insights into how such results can change self-images, relationships, and families. Chapters cover all aspects of genetic issues; from business and employer concerns to family make-up and inherited traits.

Former Panthers and the academics that write about them are starting to seriously realize that the Panthers were never just about race alone. Biographies by Elaine Brown and Assata Shakur deal with gender and the Panthers. Edmund White's biography of Jean Genet discusses how the Panthers dealt with a gay, white, foreign supporter. Now, in this book about an Afro-European Panther named Johnny Spain, Andrews looks at how a mixed-race individual was affected by the Party. Andrews writes in a simple style that would make this biography accessible to almost any reader. By moving from the stereotyped tragic mulatto to becoming a "bridge person" and cross-racial activist, this book is about redemption. I can imagine it influencing mixed-race men in the same way that Malcolm X's autobiography has influenced monoracial black men (though X was one-quarter white). One major theme of this book is how inhumanely prisoners are treated in American jails. This book should be appreciated by prisoners' rights activists regardless of race and multiracial activists regardless of their views on prisoners. ... Finally, there is a book that works against this tide. I would strongly encourage every mixed man in the US to read this book.

Lori B. Andrews, the foremost expert on legal issues related to reproductive matters, has written what must be one of the most important books ever to address the fundamental building blocks of all human life. Anyone who cares deeply about any issue surrounding in vitro fertilization, cloning, sperm donors, the use of body tissue by science and the ethics related to these matter must read this book. In clear, exciting, entertaining and occasionally very humorous language, Andrews gives frightening details of the latest breakthroughs in research technology. Here's are just a few of the many provocative topics introduced: did you know that technology exists for harvesting eggs from human female fetuses? That it's technically possible to abort a girl child, but use it's eggs to create another human being at a later date? That sperm has been frequently 'harvested' from dead men? Or the fact that, although cloned animals often have severe defects, this procedure is being pushed forward in different places around the world? And government oversight of radical new reproductive technology is practically non-existent, while other medical procedures are always exposed to extreme scrutiny. Read this book! You'll never read another story about human reproduction or cloning the same way again.

I think is one of the best b ooks (in the field) that I ever read.

(How could I get in touch with L.B.A ?

Did you know that a doctor can take a sample of your tissues, isolate some factor and then SELL it to drug companies for big bucks without asking your permission or paying you a dime?

I didn't, until I read this book.

What about the profits that gene researchers are making by patenting YOUR genes? Or about the undisclosed financial interest that regulators have in allowing such patents to proceed.

It's all in here and it makes for some very scary reading.

While most of us weren't looking, that portion of the medical community motivated primarily by greed has ventured into some very odd territory. The repercussions may make medicine even more expensive to the consumer at the same time as it makes health insurance even more unattainable.

In a world where medical mistakes already cost more lives each year than Cancer or AIDS, we cannot afford to trust our doctors to watch out for our best interests. This book makes it painfully clear the extent to which profit, rather than care for patients drives genetic and reproductive medicine.

A MUST read.