From: "John Beamish" 

That all comes from his four-five page appendix.  I probably wouldn't have
borrowed a four-five page book by Michael Crichton but it's certainly true
that his appendix points don't have a context until you've read his book.
But his book is so lame and easily dismissed that it is, though
intellectually dishonest, tempting to dismiss his conclusions because it
was so easy to dismiss the book.

If there is a redeeming feature that I didn't include, it would be the
bibliography -- but here, again, because the book was so poorly done, it is
tempting to dismiss the bibliography as being selectively chosen to support
his point without including dissenting voices.  There was one book (forgot
to make a note of it) in the bibliography that I will have to check out one
of these days.

Incidentally, I went to Amazon afterwards to read what others had said.
Apparently, Crichton claims to have written one book in nine days.  It
probably took him a while to do the reading necessary for his research on
this one ... but, once that had been completed, the authoring process
probably took about that much time.

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:04:15 -0500, Rich Gauszka
 wrote:

> I agree that it was a quick read yet Crichton he did present some
> interesting concerns about gene patenting and it could have been a pretty
> good corporate/patent horror story without the gene mutants portion of
> the
> story.   I agree about your  suspend disbelief remark and Crichton did
> waste
> an opportunity to present his case in a real world scenario instead of a
> mutant fantasy land - nothing against mutant fantasy lands but others
> have
> done that part far better than Crichton
>
> Crichton's key points
>
> . Stop patenting genes.
>    2. Establish clear guidelines for the use of human tissues.
>    3. Pass laws to ensure that data about gene testing is made public.
> He's
> referring to results of gene therapy trials.
>    4. Avoid bans on research.
>    5. Rescind the Bayh-Dole Act (that allows universities to patent and
> make
> money off their research).
>

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