ABSTRACT
This book has investigated the biotechnology world from many and diverse angles, setting it within a knowledge economy context, evolving a new knowledge-focused theoretical framework against which to test empirical characteristics of biotechnology, and exploring this from scientific, industrial, financial and policy viewpoints in developed and developing countries with respect to agro-food, environmental, energy and, most of all, healthcare biotechnology. What has been conclusively shown undermines a certain bias in the perceptions of many commentators and policy makers as well as government ministers that biotechnology is a rather esoteric scientific and commercial activity that may not be enjoyed everywhere. This rests on a narrow, vertical view of it as a very specific and circumscribed, advanced technology. But it can easily be shown that while it is not as pervasive in everyday life as, for example, information and communication technology (ICT), it is rapidly taking on the appearance and influence of a general-purpose technology, widely applicable outside its own small originating genetic engineering field. For aspects of biotechnology that were not explored in the security, policing and even ICT itself are merely some of the few that are now involved in DNA fingerprinting, biometrics and bio-chips as replacements for the ubiquitous silicon chips.
