Science, Seeds and Cyborgs by Finn Bowring

No one has ever cast Steven Rose as an uncritical fan of biotechnology, but he is aghast to see the case against genetic research put so crudely

The arguments over the promises and threats of the new genetics have been well-rehearsed. On one hand are the techno-optimists. As the human genome is deciphered, molecular biologists proudly wave CDs to bemused audiences, telling them that before long we will all have our own personalised Book of Life on a disc, allowing us to read off what we will live and die of, our sexual orientation, tendency to job satisfaction and voting pattern.

Human genetic engineering will eliminate our unhealthy genes, enhance our most desirable features. Plant and animal biotechnology will produce pest-resistant crops, and cows with medicines in their milk. What genetic engineering cannot solve pharmacogenetics will, providing a bespoke pill for every ill. Further down the line, bioengineering and informatics will fuse to produce living hybrid machines to serve our every need. Biotopia is at hand – if not now, then a suitable number of years and billions of dollars down the road.

On the other are the prophets of gloom. Life is too complex for us to understand; to mess around with genes will result in disaster. If genetic engineering works, it will lead to eugenics; disabled people will be eliminated, the rich will buy genes for intelligence, blue eyes and blond hair while the poor will stew in their own genetic juices. Genetically manipulated food masks unknown toxins, threatens biodiversity and, in the hands of unscrupulous agribusiness, destroys the livelihood of poor farmers and third-world economies. Tinkering with life is, if not contrary to God's will, at the very least treating people as means not ends.

Recognise the arguments? Who doesn't? We've read our Fukuyama, Stock and Silver and watched GeneWatch and Monsanto slug it out on television while Michael Meacher holds the ring. What is unusual is to find the entire range of the case for the prosecution, from genetics to globalisation, gathered in a single book. Finn Bowring is a sociologist, but seems more like a witch-hunter as he confronts biotechnological demons with bell, book and candle in his effort to awaken the world to the need to exorcise them.

The book reads like a catalogue of disasters foretold, beginning, of course, with DNA, that poor traduced molecule. True, you can't read off the four dimensions of life's history – three of space and one of time – from the one-dimensional strand of DNA (as Bowring quotes me to prove it, I've no complaint). But he goes much further, scouring biological heterodoxy in his effort to dethrone genetic and Darwinian supremacy.

Molecular biology put in its place, Bowring's next, more familiar, demon is agribusiness, whose greed for profits overrides ecological caution. But as if the charge of poor science and ruthless exploitation were not enough, he turns to the ethics of animal experimentation. Once again, the arguments are familiar, though not usually in the biotech context: testing drugs on animals is a poor predictor of their effect in humans; using animals as means and indifference to animal suffering are morally unacceptable. Quickfire through arguments against genetic discrimination in insurance and employment, gene therapy and cloning, a closing burst against a cyborgian future, and we are at the finale.

Many of Bowring's arguments are valid, and the book, with its 50 pages of footnotes (albeit often to secondary sources) may well serve as a reference for those who see a bio-dystopian rather than utopian future. What is largely lacking is any critical filtering of the data, or any sense that the claims are sometimes contradictory. At times he verges on the denial of any biological approach to human disease.

He quotes approvingly a comment made by Anne Karpf attacking vaccination on the grounds that it would be better to nurse children through an infection rather than pampering their immune systems by protecting them. He attacks the search for biological approaches to treating Alzheimer's on the grounds that it leads to "the disavowal of meaning in the experiences of those who are ill".

Alzheimer's is a disease whose biochemical malfunctioning is well understood, even though the causes for these malfunctions are multiple. The "meaning" of the experience is the steady loss of memory and disintegration for the sufferer, and is devastating not only for the individual but for carers. To deny this is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the Seventies anti-psychiatry movement and indicative of the approach of an author willing to use any argument to support his case. I am not renowned for arguing for "balance", but the case against unregulated biotechnological approaches to solving the world's problems is too important to cheapen it like this.

A new edition of Steven Rose's prizewinning book 'The Making of Memory' will be published by Cape later this year