Trading the Genome

"In a work that draws on anthropology, history, philosophy, business, and law, Bronwyn Parry links a firsthand investigation of the operation of the bioprospecting industry to an analysis of broader economic, regulatory, and technological transformations: the rise of an information economy, global intellectual property rights and benefit-sharing regimes, and the progressive molecularization of approaches to biological research. Parry reveals how a failure to monitor this new global trade in bio-information could have potentially disastrous consequences for the suppliers of genetic and biochemical resources - transforming the complex dynamics of collecting, as well as the politics and practice of biological resource exploitation."--BOOK JACKET.