The Human Body Shop: The Engineering and Marketing of Life

This is the most disturbing and damning report to date on the biotechnology revolution and its ethical and social consequences and risks. Kimbrell, policy director of the Foundation of Economic Trends in Washington, D.C., first looks at a new multibillion-dollar industry involving the manipulation and marketing of blood, organs and fetal parts. He then moves on to the patenting of genetically engineered animals and even of human ``products'' (e.g., cells and genes) and the selling of human reproductive materials. He condemns surrogate motherhood as a form of ``bioslavery,'' and warns of the high ethical price of the new eugenics. Extrapolating from current trends, Kimbrell ominously predicts the genetic engineering of workers to enhance productive traits and the cloning of humans in the coming decades. His sane prescriptions for restricting the engineering and marketing of life cap his scary, Orwellian glimpse into a new biofuture. Photos. $25,000 ad/promo; author tour. (May)