ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an industry view of public policy issues in the development of biotechnology. The advent of biotechnology suggested that recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (rDNA) would also produce chemical, agricultural, and pharmaceutical products. Potential pharmaceutical products include blood expanders, hormones, antibiotics, and vaccines. In human therapeutics, many of the major human proteins targeted for study have been cloned, levels of production of these proteins by the organisms into which they are cloned approach theoretical limits, and there are major advances toward the use of rDNA techniques to develop safe vaccines. If biomass alternatives for the production of energy and chemicals begin to function effectively, they will affect the entire petroleum balance around the world. The ecological impact of biomass expansion could be very important. The rDNA vaccine eliminates the risk of causing disease through the use of infected blood.
