Invisible Frontiers

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The goal of this ``race'' between a Harvard biogenetics lab and two San Francisco-area labs was to make insulin in mass-market quantities by using recombinant DNA techniques. ``This is demanding reading for biochemistry novices,'' warned PW , ``but the drama is double-track: scientists plus entrepreneurs.'' (October)

Library Journal

During the later 1970s research on recombinant DNA and bacterial cloning of human genes was at the center of ``Big Amazing Science.'' Recognition by peers, Nobel prizes, and lucrative pharmaceutical contracts drove ambitious scientists in a feverish competition, and two major biotechnology firms emergedBiogen and Genentech. Through interviews with the participants, Hall has assembled a story of science at the cutting edge, and especially of the personalities involvedtheir motivations, their philosophies. While the cloning of human insulin and somatostasin has established Genentech as a near billion dollar enterprise, the commercial and social impact of this research is yet to be determined. To be read for the human interest side of the story. Walter P. Coombs, Jr. Biology Dept., Western New England Coll., Springfield, Mass.