What are the ethical and political implications when the very foundations of life -things of awe and spiritual significance - are translated into products accessible to few people? This book critically analyses this historic recontextualisation. Through mediation - when meaning moves "from one text to another, from one discourse to another" - biotechnology is transformed into analysable data and into public discourses. The unique book links biotechnology with media and citizenship. As with any "commodity", biological products have been commodified. Because enormous speculative investment rests on this, risk will be understated and benefit will be overstated. Benefits will be unfairly distributed. Already, the bioprospecting of Southern megadiverse nations, legally sanctioned by U.S. property rights conventions, has led to wealth and health benefits in the North. Crucial to this development are biotechnological discourses that shift meanings from a "language of life" into...