Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World

By: Wesley J. Smith

Narrated by: Brian Emerson

What is embryonic stem cell research? Why is it so controversial? What is its relationship to human cloning? Events are moving so fast and biotechnology seems so complicated that many of us don't have an informed opinion about issues that are remaking the human future before our very eyes.

Now Wesley J. Smith provides us with a guide to the new world that is no longer a figment of our imagination, but right around the corner of our lives. This carefully researched audiobook reports on the gargantuan "big biotech" industry and its supporters in science and in the universities. Smith reveals how this lobby works and how the ideology of "scientism", mixed with the lure of riches, threatens to dismantle ethical norms and compromise the uniqueness and importance of all human life.

©2004 Wesley J. Smith (P)2006 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Smith deserves exceptionally high marks for providing an eminently readable, profoundly insightful, and thoughtful conversation on the impact of biotechnology." (American Conservative)

Not At All What I Was Expecting

I was expecting a good review of the state of the art in biotech. Instead this is a thinly disguised Catholic manifesto on the evils of abortion and the need to regard a few cells as a "nascent human life". The author comes out against in-vitro fertilization because of the excess fertilized eggs produced, demonizes researchers as motivated by money and the desire to "destroy nascent human life", and praises George Bush's stand against stem cell research. It's pretty much out of date anyway since the current research tends to emphasise induced pluripotent stem cells anyway and the embryonic argument is moot. I suppose the "Brave New World" in the title should have tipped me off to the author's bias... I wouldn't recommend this to anyone interested in a scientific overview. Might appeal to church groups but that's about the only ones I can see getting anything out of it.

out of date

What would have made Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World better?

Stem cell research has progressed far beyond the topics discussed in this book since it was published.

Would you ever listen to anything by Wesley J. Smith again?

no

Would you be willing to try another one of Brian Emerson’s performances?

not sure

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The political agenda seemed very slanted, this made it a curious read.