ABSTRACT

Biotechnology holds a potential to alter human affairs that has been compared to the great historical eras of technological impact, such as the Industrial Revolution. Society may be entering an "Age of Intervention," as Clifford Grobstein has claimed, leaping to new conceptual and technical levels in the use and modification of other life forms for human ends. Civilized society will undoubtedly demand some assurance that the great new power of biotechnology will also be used as effectively and as safely as possible. Society must now begin to build the foundations of a future where projects will be evermore ambitious and diverse. Society will face the obvious need to maintain a balanced pool of experts in diverse fields of biology. Engineered organisms will be interesting research material in fields such as developmental biology, population genetics, and even some of the environmental sciences.