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A review by beth_has_books
Tamed: Ten Species That Changed Our World by Alice Roberts
4.0
Interesting. Before reading, expected it to be mostly familiar content. But she went into more depth that I had not read elsewhere, particularly about the locations of where the different species were domesticated. It seems like we have only learned some of this recently due to advances in genetics. There was some content about how they got domesticated too, but it seems like we have much less visibility into that. The author gave some speculations which sounded plausible and illustrated it nicely.
The author seems in favour of GM. I agreed with most of her points, such as how it is arbitrary that the public is fine with using radiation to modify genes but drawing the line at the other GM methods. I had one concern which she did not address: golden rice. She talked about how it is enhanced to provide a vitamin that rice normally wouldn't, and how this would be beneficial for malnourished people in developing countries, and she said it wouldn't have any health negatives. However it left me a little worried that other people who currently have well-balanced diets would start finding themselves unintentionally overdosing on that vitamin, if they continued eating same quantities of rice alongside their usual portions of other foods such as fish. But maybe there are nuances I was missing.
From her concluding remarks in the final chapter, it reads like earlier drafts may have included a chapter on pigs too, because she mentions about them interbreeding with wild boars. But I didn't notice any mention of pigs earlier in the book, so maybe they were too similar to the cattle chapter to be worth including in the published version.
The author seems in favour of GM. I agreed with most of her points, such as how it is arbitrary that the public is fine with using radiation to modify genes but drawing the line at the other GM methods. I had one concern which she did not address: golden rice. She talked about how it is enhanced to provide a vitamin that rice normally wouldn't, and how this would be beneficial for malnourished people in developing countries, and she said it wouldn't have any health negatives. However it left me a little worried that other people who currently have well-balanced diets would start finding themselves unintentionally overdosing on that vitamin, if they continued eating same quantities of rice alongside their usual portions of other foods such as fish. But maybe there are nuances I was missing.
From her concluding remarks in the final chapter, it reads like earlier drafts may have included a chapter on pigs too, because she mentions about them interbreeding with wild boars. But I didn't notice any mention of pigs earlier in the book, so maybe they were too similar to the cattle chapter to be worth including in the published version.