Reviews

''The Handbook is far more than the sum of its parts. It brings together a formidable international team of scholars, who provide both a comprehensive map of the field and an array of provocative arguments about the best ways to grasp its socio-technical complexities. The authors avoid the breathless, impressionable analysis that often characterises accounts of new technologies. Rather they give both the novice reader and the seasoned scholar a rigorous and exhaustive account of the multiple social contexts and ramifications of genetic innovation''.....Catherine Waldby, International Research Fellow, Sydney University and Visiting Professor, Centre for Biomedicine and Society, Kings College, London.

''The Handbook of Genetics and Society provides an excellent map of this fast-moving research area. Established scholars, as well as newcomers to the field, will find this collection offers an invaluable guide to studies of genetics, genomics, and society''....Stephen Hilgartner, Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University, USA

"The editors of this comprehensive Handbook have done a great job in providing a synthetic and critical overview on the co-construction of contemporary genetics and society. The book aims at re-thinking the new bio-economies and the innovations that go into them in an era of genomics. The Handbook represents social science at its best. Its contents are well-informed and display an awareness of how the social sciences are themselves implicated in this rapidly developing field."….Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

'Francis Collins , former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, described the coming century as the "Genome Era" in science and medicine, acknowledging the volume and intensity of genomic research in both the public and private sectors. The Genome era promises fundamental changes in research, medicine, biotechnology and in turn, in social relations. This handbook provides an invaluable collection of essays not only on the transformational effect of genomics in medicine and commerce but also on the out-dated representations of genomics in the media and community, which still rely heavily on a mono-genetic view of the science. The assays on the regulatory response in the Genome era are equally impressive.'................Don Chalmers, Professor and Dean of the Law School and, University of Tasmania. Director of the Centre for Law and Genetics. Also Chair of the Gene Technology Ethics and Community Consultative Committee, Deputy Chair of the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)

'A comprehensive approach from a stellar set of international experts. From well-known debates on genetic testing to the new frontiers of personalized medicine and nutrigenomics, this handbook resists the hype and offers clarity, substance, and critical engagement.'.............Steven Epstein, author of Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, USA