It is more than a year since the Dag Hammarskjöld Seminar at Bogève and in Geneva. We have tried our best to retain the spirit of those important discussions while updating the information. The pace of technical, political and corporate change makes both the data and the analysis something of a moving target. No doubt we have sometimes missed our mark.
In the swirl of enthusiastic and uncritical media ‘hype’, we have found it most appropriate to present mainly the negative Socioeconomic implications of the new biotechniques. Readers are exposed to enough of the other side already. This leaves us open to the criticism that we are ‘Luddites’. This is not true. We see many wonderful possibilities in the science—most especially in the area of human health care—but we are very doubtful that the positive potential will be realized.