Asian Biotech

Author: Aihwa Ong
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822393204
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
Providing the first overview of Asia’s emerging biosciences landscape, this timely and important collection brings together ethnographic case studies on biotech endeavors such as genetically modified foods in China, clinical trials in India, blood collection in Singapore and China, and stem-cell research in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. While biotech policies and projects vary by country, the contributors identify a significant trend toward state entrepreneurialism in biotechnology, and they highlight the ways that political thinking and ethical reasoning are converging around the biosciences. As ascendant nations in a region of postcolonial emergence, with an “uncanny surplus” in population and pandemics, Asian countries treat their populations as sources of opportunity and risk. Biotech enterprises are allied to efforts to overcome past humiliations and restore national identity and political ambition, and they are legitimized as solutions to national anxieties about food supplies, diseases, epidemics, and unknown biological crises in the future. Biotechnological responses to perceived risks stir deep feelings about shared fate, and they crystallize new ethical configurations, often re-inscribing traditional beliefs about ethnicity, nation, and race. As many of the essays in this collection illustrate, state involvement in biotech initiatives is driving the emergence of “biosovereignty,” an increasing pressure for state control over biological resources, commercial health products, corporate behavior, and genetic based-identities. Asian Biotech offers much-needed analysis of the interplay among biotechnologies, economic growth, biosecurity, and ethical practices in Asia. Contributors Vincanne Adams Nancy N. Chen Stefan Ecks Kathleen Erwin Phuoc V. Le Jennifer Liu Aihwa Ong Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner Kaushik Sunder Rajan Wen-Ching Sung Charis Thompson Ara Wilson

Betting on Biotech

Author: Joseph Wong
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801463386
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
After World War II, several late-developing countries registered astonishingly high growth rates under strong state direction, making use of smart investment strategies, turnkey factories, and reverse-engineering, and taking advantage of the postwar global economic boom. Among these economic miracles were postwar Japan and, in the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called Asian Tigers—Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—whose experiences epitomized the analytic category of the "developmental state." In Betting on Biotech, Joseph Wong examines the emerging biotechnology sector in each of these three industrial dynamos. They have invested billions of dollars in biotech industries since the 1990s, but commercial blockbusters and commensurate profits have not followed. Industrial upgrading at the cutting edge of technological innovation is vastly different from the dynamics of earlier practices in established industries. The profound uncertainties of life-science-based industries such as biotech have forced these nations to confront a new logic of industry development, one in which past strategies of picking and making winners have given way to a new strategy of throwing resources at what remain very long shots. Betting on Biotech illuminates a new political economy of industrial technology innovation in places where one would reasonably expect tremendous potential—yet where billion-dollar bets in biotech continue to teeter on the brink of spectacular failure.

Biotechnology and Development

Author: Sachin Chaturvedi
Publisher: Academic Foundation
ISBN: 9788171883462
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
Biotechnology Is At The Heart Of Technology Revolution In Asia Today With Immense Potential In The Pharmaceutical And Agriculture Sectors. This Study Covers Economic And Policy Issues And The Experiences In Biotechnology In Japan, India, Malaysia, The Phillipines, Korea, Bangladesh, Thailand, China And Singapore And Also The International Cooperative Strategies Of Asean And In Europe. This Book Is A Valuable Resource For Governments, Multilateral Institutions, Academics And Practitioners In The Field Of Economic Development And Technology Policy Management.

Fungible Life

Author: Aihwa Ong
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373645
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong explores the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research, offering critical insights into the complex ways Asian bioscientific worlds and cosmopolitan sciences are entangled in a tropical environment brimming with the threat of emergent diseases. At biomedical centers in Singapore and China scientists map genetic variants, disease risks, and biomarkers, mobilizing ethnicized "Asian" bodies and health data for genomic research. Their differentiation between Chinese, Indian, and Malay DNA makes fungible Singapore's ethnic-stratified databases that come to "represent" majority populations in Asia. By deploying genomic science as a public good, researchers reconfigure the relationships between objects, peoples, and spaces, thus rendering "Asia" itself as a shifting entity. In Ong's analysis, Asia emerges as a richly layered mode of entanglements, where the population's genetic pasts, anxieties and hopes, shared genetic weaknesses, and embattled genetic futures intersect. Furthermore, her illustration of the contrasting methods and goals of the Biopolis biomedical center in Singapore and BGI Genomics in China raises questions about the future direction of cosmopolitan science in Asia and beyond.

Applications of Biotechnology in Traditional Fermented Foods

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309046858
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
In developing countries, traditional fermentation serves many purposes. It can improve the taste of an otherwise bland food, enhance the digestibility of a food that is difficult to assimilate, preserve food from degradation by noxious organisms, and increase nutritional value through the synthesis of essential amino acids and vitamins. Although "fermented food" has a vaguely distasteful ring, bread, wine, cheese, and yogurt are all familiar fermented foods. Less familiar are gari, ogi, idli, ugba, and other relatively unstudied but important foods in some African and Asian countries. This book reports on current research to improve the safety and nutrition of these foods through an elucidation of the microorganisms and mechanisms involved in their production. Also included are recommendations for needed research.

Made in China

Author: Jasper Becker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1787386120
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
What might COVID-19 mean for, and reveal about, China's place in the world? The coronavirus pandemic started in Wuhan, home to the leading lab studying the SARS virus and bats. Was that pure coincidence? This book explores what we know, and still don't know, about the origins of COVID-19, and how it was handled in China. We may never get all the answers, but much is already clear: China's record as the origin of earlier pandemics, and its struggle to bring contagious diseases under control; its history as both a victim of biological warfare and a developer of deadly bioweapons. When Covid broke out, Wuhan was building science parks to realise Beijing's ambitions in biotech research. Whoever achieves global leadership of the gene-editing industry stands to harvest great power and wealth. China has already challenged Western technological supremacy with 5G and in other industries. Yet this tiny, invisible virus has cruelly exposed a critical flaw in the Chinese political system: obsessive secrecy. The West wanted to trust the PRC, hoping that, as it prospered, it would become an open society. Made in China reveals how Beijing's leaders have betrayed that trust.

Beyond Technonationalism

Author: Kathryn C. Ibata-Arens
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503608751
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
The biomedical industry, which includes biopharmaceuticals, genomics and stem cell therapies, and medical devices, is among the fastest growing worldwide. While it has been an economic development target of many national governments, Asia is currently on track to reach the epicenter of this growth. What accounts for the rapid and sustained economic growth of biomedicals in Asia? To answer this question, Kathryn Ibata-Arens integrates global and national data with original fieldwork to present a conceptual framework that considers how national governments have managed key factors, like innovative capacity, government policy, and firm-level strategies. Taking China, India, Japan, and Singapore in turn, she compares each country's underlying competitive advantages. What emerges is an argument that countries pursuing networked technonationalism (NTN) effectively upgrade their capacity for innovation and encourage entrepreneurial activity in targeted industries. In contrast to countries that engage in classic technonationalism—like Japan's developmental state approach—networked technonationalists are global minded to outside markets, while remaining nationalistic within the domestic economy. By bringing together aggregate data at the global and national level with original fieldwork and drawing on rich cases, Ibata-Arens telegraphs implications for innovation policy and entrepreneurship strategy in Asia—and beyond.

Stem Cell Research in Asia

Author: Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317571886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
The great hurry to realise promised cures in stem cell research requires regulation to guarantee bioethical research practices. Yet, increasingly similar national guidelines for stem cell research yields a range of diverging research practices. This book shows how the different rationale of regulation affects stem cell research practices in Asia. In low- and medium income countries such as India and China the advancement of science has a different weight on the national agenda, and the evaluation of scientific research is measured with a different yardstick, depending on the political and national research environment. For developing countries the question of research funding into stem cell research, healthcare, and the donation of embryos, foetuses and oocytes entail different considerations compared to in affluent welfare societies. Moreover, research institutions have different cultural and political histories, so that the meaning of formal guidelines, legislation and social rules may differ according to their various institutional settings. This volume discusses the informal cultures, social conventions and traditions that are crucial to the way in which stem cell research takes place in Asia. This book was originally published as a special issue of New Genetics and Society.

Biotech in China

Author: ROLF. SCHMID
Publisher: Jenny Stanford Publishing
ISBN: 9789814877534
Category : Biotechnology
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
In her quest for a global leadership in science and technology, the People's Republic of China has attained top ranks in the number of scientific publications, "hot papers," or national and international patent applications. This also pertains to fields such as biomedicine, agricultural and industrial biotechnology, as well as environmental monitoring and sanitation. However, analysis of the underlying structures and mechanisms is hindered by the sheer flood of data, by stringent government control of all media, including the internet; and by ambiguities inherent in translation from Chinese. This book tries to overcome these difficulties and provides a concise picture of the biotechnology-related research and development (R&D) in China. The book begins with brief accounts of China's geography, people, and their mindset; her political and administrational structure, economy, and finance; her infrastructure related to science and technology; and her educational system and R&D landscape. It then presents succinct accounts on structures and developments in biomedicine, diagnostics, agriculture, fermented food, bioindustry, and environmental biotechnology, with reference to government, industry, and academia. It finally attempts to predict next steps in Chinese biotechnology, both for the national agenda and in view of China's ambitious global development strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative.

Asian Medical Industries

Author: Stephan Kloos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000523268
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Book Description
This book develops the concept of Asian Medical Industries as a novel perspective on traditional Asian medicines. Complementing and updating existing work in this field, the book provides a critical and comparative analytic framework for understanding Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Sowa Rigpa, and Japanese Kampo in the 21st century. No longer subaltern health resources or conservative systems of traditional knowledge, these medicines have become an integral part of modern Asia as innovative, lucrative industries. Ten original case studies employ insights from anthropology, history, geography, pharmaceutical sciences, botany, and economics to trace the transformation of Asian medical traditions into rapidly growing and dynamic pharmaceutical industries. Collectively, these contributions identify this as a major phenomenon impacting Asian and global healthcare, economics, cultural politics, and environments. The book suggests that we can learn more about Asian medicines today by approaching them as industries rather than as cultural or epistemic systems. Asian Medical Industries is a highly original resource for students and scholars across a range of academic fields such as anthropology, history, and Asian studies, as well as medical practitioners, health sector actors, and policymakers.