I'm trying to figure out the name and author of a science fiction novel I read a few years back. The book's chapters could largely be stand-alone, except one repeating story. (Which I'll explain in a moment.) The overall story is that this guy locates a ship from a past empire that has the resources to do all kinds of incredible genetic engineering. He then goes around the galaxy performing genetic engineering for hire, using the ship for good. If I'm remembering correctly, he also had to fend off at least one attempt by others to take the ship from him and use it for less enlightened purposes.
The one repeating story involves one planet that has a serious over-population problem. They refuse to do anything to slow down population growth, not even birth control, and twice he solves their problem by genetically engineering some plant or the other to dramatically increase yields so that the increasing population won't starve. The last time he claims to have done the same, but this time around there's an additional genetic payload that isn't apparent until much later that sterilizes half the population. That last time one of the planet's natives that was working with him learns what will
really happen, and he leaves it up to her if she wants to speak up and stop things. She doesn't speak up and the book ends mentioning how her name was cursed for generations afterward on the planet, but their population problems were solved.
I'd really like to re-read it, but I cannot remember the name or author and the details I remember are too vague to get Google to spit out the correct title.
