Not bad on the whole. It is a book well written for a lay person who wants to understand more about science and how it is conditioning our life and may effect our life in the future.
Most of the scientific information written in the book I already knew but that because I had studied it and it is part of my current job.
The scientific information is posed in an easy and digestible way. I found the diagrams and flow charts quite straight forward and easily understandably even if someone has no scientific background. So thumbs up for that. It is not always easy to explain complex scientific methodology to students, let alone to people who is not there usual cup of tea.
What I liked reading about were the implications that these discoveries can have both on the individual and on the society at large. The political and ethical deductions that scientific discovery can eventually bring about in our daily life.
There where things I didn't think about.
For example, what happens when the population will eventually keep on ageing? The social and family side-effects correlated to it? The physiological turn-over that is healthy for society to grow?
What will happen with all the genetical, medical and pharmaceutical data that is being gathered and stored on each one of us? Will that eventually effect our choice of jobs, choice to of partner and offspring, access to social security and health insurance? Preclude us from specific medical treatment?
How will all this be justly balanced?
Well this is a question that the book didn't answer but most probably it was not it job to do so.
It is however a issue that each one of us has to ponder and discuss about.
So what I can say about this book is that I have no learnt anything new about the scientific part but for sure it helped me look at science from the social point of view and that has definitely been an eye opener.
1 comment:
With all the information stored on us somewhere, it does give one pause to think of how it could be used. Hopefully for the good, but there will always be someone out there who would use it in the wrong way. Those type of people seem to be lurking everywhere.
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