From Bio to Nano: Learning Lessons from the UK Agricultural Biotechnology Controversy

In this paper we develop an analysis of the public and political controversy which overtook genetically modified (GM) foods and crops in the UK in the 1990s and identify some key lessons for the future regulation and governance of nanotechnologies. Given the starkness of the ‘GM Controversy’, it is not surprising that there is now speculation in many quarters as to whether nanotechnologies might not be expected to experience a similarly rough passage. Here, it is suggested, is a further potentially transformative technology, now arguably at roughly the stage of development as was agricultural biotechnology in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and subject to similar levels of utopian promise, expectation and dystopian fear (Nordmann, 2004b). Some NGOs are already suggesting that the issues and problems that nanotechnology raises are of such far-reaching political and social importance that ‘governments [should] declare an immediate moratorium on commercial production of new nanomaterials and launch a transparent global process for evaluating the socioeconomic, health and environmental implications of the technology’ (ETC, 2003, p. 72). Crudely put, the agricultural GM experience represents a warning, a cautionary tale of how not to assess an emerging technology and allay public concern. For many, addressing the question ‘Is nanotechnology the next GM?’ is critical to the commercial success and public acceptability of emerging applications in the field. As such the ‘GM experience’ has been portrayed as a model ‘to be avoided’ in the future development and governance of nanotechnology. The comparison between GM and nanotechnology—and the lessons that may be drawn from the regulation of biotechnology—has been made in a number of different contexts (see, for example, Einsiedel and Goldenberg, 2004; Mayer, 2002; Brumfiel, 2003; Wolfson, 2003; Mehta, 2004). As discussed below our analysis here is Science as Culture Vol. 15, No. 4, 291–307, December 2006