Genetic engineering is the term given to the process of producing living forms with altered characteristics by alteration of their genes, usually by implantation of genetic material from som other species into the DNA of the plant or animal to be modified. This report outlines the principles on which genetic engineering is based, and briefly surveys some of its economic and social implications.
Since genetic engineering burst on the public scene in the 1970s, few areas of scientific endeavor have been so subject at once to exaggerated fears and to exaggerated hopes. Genes are the fundamental building blocks of life, in the sense that it is essential a creature's genes that determine its nature, whether man or mouse or mulberry tree. To artificially manipulate genes thus rouses deep fears of scientific monkeying with the essense of life, fears that go back at least to Mary Shelley's early nineteenth century classic, Frankenstein. The very phrase "genetic engineering" conjures up nightmare images, some unlikely or even absurd rats the size of elephants, minotaurs, supermen and "submen" others all too conceivable, such as genetically tailored germ warfare epidemics which would attack only certain racial or ethnic groups (7:93 94).
At the same time, genetic engineering raised some unrealistic hopes: cures for cancer, for example, or for genetically based birth defects. On a less exalted level, "biotech" became a Wall Street darling during the late 1970s and through much of the 1980s, with predictions that it would become the next great growth industry. When reality turned out to be less dramatic than speculation, biotech stocks suffered heavily in the late 1980s (2).
The reality of genetic engineering, to date and for the easily foreseeable future, is less dramatic than the public's or business community's hopes or fears. It is unlikely to produce supercreatures, cure cancer, or bring about cub...