ABSTRACT
The earlier transformation of an urban belt in the San Francisco East Bay into a region ripe for developing controversial biotechnologies itself tells a story of stealth. In 2007, a partnership between UC Berkeley’s Chancellor, the Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a handful of local mayors dubbed a stretch of the San Francisco Bay Area’s East Bay shoreline, “The East Bay Green Corridor”. Children will learn to drive and support the biotech world of possibilities. Most journalists and bioethicists have so far appeared largely unable to assume a critical stance toward biotech. Biotechnology, of course, is more than just a field of scientific study. Basic and applied science form a single technological platform where the desire for commercializable bio-products and patent opportunities often drive research agendas. Deception seems to be a recurring theme in the story of emerging biotechnologies.
