The Red Canary

Download or read book The Red Canary written by Tim Birkhead and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The creation of Dolly the sheep in the 1990s was for many people the start of a new era: the age of genetically modified animals. However, the idea was not new for in the 1920s an amateur scientist, Hans Duncker, decided to genetically engineer a red canary. Though his experiments failed, they paved the way for others to succeed when it was recognised that the canary needed to be both a product of nature and nurture. This highly original narrative, of huge contemporary relevance, reveals how the obsession with turning the wild canary from green to red heralded the exciting but controversial developments in genetic manipulation.