Focusing on the period from 1970s onwards, this is a study of the relationship between politics, economics, science, and cultural values in the United States. It demonstrates that the history of biotechnology cannot be understood without taking into account the simultaneous rise of neo-liberalism as a political force and an economic policy.

From the development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s to the second Bush administration's policies on stem cell research, Cooper connects the utopian polemic of free-market capitalism with the growing internal contradictions of the commercialized life sciences. Melinda Cooper is a research fellow with the Centre for Biomedicine and Society, Kings College London.