Introduction

The development of a multinational regulatory framework for biotechnology during the past twenty years provides an unparalleled opportunity to study the processes by which technological advances overcome public resistance and are incorporated into a receptive social context. Through the vehicle of regulation, states provide assurance that the risks of new technologies can be contained within manageable bounds. Procedures are devised to limit uncertainty, channel the flow of future public resistance, and define the permissible modalities of dissent. Regulation, in these respects, becomes integral to the shaping of technology. A regulated technology encompasses more than simply the ‘knowledge of how to fulfill certain human purposes in a specifiable and reproducible way.’ Regulation transmutes such instrumental knowledge into a cultural resource; it is a kind of social contract that specifies the terms under which state and society agree to accept the costs, risks and benefits of a given technological enterprise.

The passage of biotechnology from moratorium to market in just twenty years exemplifies this process of social accommodation. During this period, biotechnology moved from a research programme that aroused misgivings even among its most ardent advocates to a flourishing industry promising revolutionary benefits in return for negligible and easily controlled risks. The transformation occurred almost simultaneously and with remarkable speed throughout Europe and North America. To facilitate the commercialization of biotechnology, the United States, and the European Community and several of its member states, adopted laws and regulations to control not only laboratory research with genetically engineered organisms but also their purposeful release into the environment.