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Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information (ISBN: 978-0-8122-4099-3) is an interactive, scholarly DVD-rom forthcoming from University of Pennsylvania Press in spring 2008. Biofutures deals with a key set of issues: the relationships between biology, law, and the cultures of creativity and ownership.
The six chapters of this DVD-ROM are designed to help viewers understand these perplexing aspects of contemporary biocommerce in the United States from several perspectives. We outline key technological developments that have made it possible for groups of researchers to create therapeutic products based on genetic engineering of living tissue. We also discuss changes in American law that have allowed corporations to patent living tissues, as well as genetic sequences and genes. Finally, we focus on social and economic changes in order to understand the ways in which many of the thorny problems of biocommerce (for example: should corporations be allowed to patent naturally occurring genes?) are the result of more general changes in conceptions of “property,” “labor,” and “information” that have occurred as a result of the rise of the information economy.
Biofutures is available from Penn Press for Mac and PC. You can see more screen snaps HERE.