Man-Made Life/Algeny:

...Regrettably, what is interesting in Rifkin's book is not new, and what is new is not interesting...

...Specifically, he argues that Darwinism (which he views as nothing more than its creator's attempt to explain nature consistent with nineteenth century industrialism) is now washed up as a theory...

...Both authors predict that this field has a potential for changing our world that is unequaled by any other branch of science, but Cher-fas is more careful in describing the likely scientific developments and more aware of the difficulties that stand in the way of achieving that potential, particularly in complex organisms...

...Rifkin fears that a horrible outcome is foreordained unless we now say "no" to this whole field of science and technology...

...Indeed, one of the strengths of Man-Made Life is that it brings the scientists (as well as the science) to life...

...Cherfas suggests it is possible that our governmental, cultural, and religious institutions will prove themselves equal to the tasks before them...

...ALGENY Jeremy Rifkin Viking, $14.95, 298 pp...

...It is scientifically accurate but accessible to a lay person who wants to understand what all the excitement is about...

...Before one gets to Rifkin's prediction that the genetic engineers are laying the groundwork for the Apocalypse, the reader has to wade through a lot of watered-down philosophy of science...

...PATRICK JORDAN was formerly one of the editors of The Catholic Worker in New York...

...Readers with religious backgrounds will be disappointed to find Rifkin not only equating what is (i.e., "nature") with what ought to be but also resting the "ought" on a vaguely divine basis...

...PAUL misner is an associate professor of theology at Marquette University...

...Both this growth in knowledge, which seems the most awesome aspect of the field so far, and the potential applications of that knowledge, specifically the ability to bring about designed changes in the gene functioning, are addressed in recent books by two authors named Jeremy, although only one book would properly be labeled a Jeremiad (Rifkin's...

...Hence, he is much less prone to proclaim that wholesale genetic engineering of human beings will "soon" be upon us or to ignore distinctions between altering conditions caused by an error in a single, known nucleotide (such as in sickle cell anemia) and those that rest on a complex and still obscure interaction of the environment and many genes (such as intelligence and behavior...

...Nearly a century passed between Mendel's discoveries in 1865 about the basic rules of inheritance and Crick and Watson's 1953 announcement of the double helix of DNA, the master molecule of life...

...Furthermore, his argumentation is inconsistent - he relies on authors or schools of thought to demolish an opponent (like poor old Charles Darwin), and then later ridicules the same authors or schools, without acknowledging the inconsistency...

...Cherfas and Rifkin both make clear that we face many choices about the uses of gene splicing...

...Alexander Morgan Capron THE ABILITY of scientists to transform genes - a feat that has been repeatedly heralded to the public over the past decade through the front page coverage of each new application - is, if anything, overshadowed by the transformation in understanding about the processes of life, down to the molecular level, that has occurred in the field of genetics...

...Rather, in Rifkin's hands, these epistemological insights - which have been recognized at least since the Greeks and subjected to much recent analysis - are difficult to take seriously, since they are presented in exaggerated rhetoric and linked with problematic assertions, such as a suggested man/nature dualism that is reminiscent of a simplified mind/body dualism...

...Indeed, Algeny is a striking example of the technique that philosopher Carl Cohen has termed "heavy question argument...

...REVIEWERS ALEXANDER MORGAN CAPRON is professor of law, ethics, and public policy at Georgetown University...

...A rhetorician like Rifkin can suggest things without ever actually saying them, because a question by definition asks rather than asserts...

...Indeed, Rifkin has really written two books...

...In the first he attempts to show that scientific ideas have dangerous effects when they become social paradigms and vice versa...

...He served as the executive director of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research from December 1979 to March 1983...

...In the subsequent thirty years, the growth in knowledge has been practically logarithmic - altering the ways scientists view many biological phenomena, from relationships among species to the processes by which cells multiply, divide, differentiate, and produce proteins, from the causes of many diseases (especially the cancers) to new approaches to cure them...

...Cherfas's book provides an excellent account of the field...

...Seemingly unaware that in the Judeo-Christian tradition nature is God's creation, rather than being God itself as the pagans believed, Rifkin mistakes sermons for arguments...

...In its place, the genetic engineers are supplying us with a new cosmology, which they believe to be an accurate description of nature but which Rifkin sees as "self-deception," merely the confusion of nature with a computer...

...Rifkin, by comparison, is quick to question people's motives, and his predictions emphasize the evil consequences that might flow from this field of endeavor...

...Given the present high level of activity in molecular genetics, it is remarkable how in the early seventies the field seemed to its leaders to have plateaued - a feeling that was dramatically reversed when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen found that substances called restriction enzymes could be used to splice foreign genetic material into bacteria - where the new material could be duplicated billions of times...

...Though Cherfas explores the social and ethical issues presented by such developments, he sees them as inherent in the new knowledge, not as a manifestation of the wickedness of man or corporations...