BioTechGov.org
Title
Biotech Governance Project
Description
About our Project
Some new technologies, such as nuclear power, are frightening from the start, and create an instant consensus over the need to establish political controls over their development and use. Other new technologies appear to be much more benign, and consequently subject to little or no regulation. Personal computers and the Internet are examples of this type.
Biotechnology falls somewhere between these extremes. Transgenic crops and human genetic engineering make people far more uncomfortable than do personal computers or the Internet. But biotechnology also promises important benefits for human health and well-being. The ethical problems potentially raised by human biotechnology, such as the safety of human genetic experimentation, the social impact of germ-line engineering, enhancement versus therapy, and the like, tend to be more subtle and more difficult to evaluate.
In the face of a technology like this, where good and bad are intimately connected, it is in the best interest of modern societies to control the development and use of biotechnologies politically.
