New developments in biotechnology : U.S. investment in biotechnology.

  • United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment.
Date:
1988
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New developments in biotechnology : U.S. investment in biotechnology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    future. There is also a widespread feeling that EPA is biased against biological approaches to waste disposal and unwilling to support approaches in- volving biotechnology. The field lacks credibility because biological techniques were oversold dur- ing the 1970s. In addition, many biological ap- proaches take longer than incineration or exca- vation and are avoided because of a desire to address the problem quickly. Funding appears to be insufficient and compara- tively unstable. The in-house research EPA funds is of high quality, but it is at a relatively low level. At the same time, reports from individual com- panies lack credibility due to the potential conflict of interest inherent in any company-sponsored research. The Federal Government must take the lead in addressing critical research areas and establishing clearly defined cleanup standards. Because of these factors, small start-up biotech- nology firms usually cannot afford the high finan- cial risk required to achieve progress in the field. The large initial investment needed to develop the appropriate technology, as well as the necessary knowledge base, is another obstacle. Photo credit: Ecova Corp. Daily tilling of soil provides oxygen to naturally occurring microbes, enabling them to remediate hydrocarbon- contaminated soil in an enclosed, solid-phase soil treatment facility. Current applications of biotechnology to waste management rely on naturally occurring microbes; the application of genetic engineering to this field remains some years away. Finally, public acceptance is required to imple- ment biotechnological approaches to waste dis- posal. The generic fear of genetically engineered organisms may be compounded by the difficulty of containing the waste to be disposed. Ten policy issues relevant to U.S. investment in biotechnology were identified during the course of this study. They are: ® Federal funding for biotechnology research; ¢ balancing support for basic and applied re- search and development; © interagency cooperation in support of bio- technology; e information needs and reporting requirements; ® training biotechnology personnel; ¢ monitoring university-industry relationships in biotechnology; ¢ Federal support of State programs in biotech- nology; ¢ providing financial incentives for private in- vestment in commercial biotechnology; e providing direct support for start-up and scale-up in commercial biotechnology; and ¢ Federal controls on the export of biotechnol- ogy products and processes. f Associated with each policy area are several is- sues that Congress might consider, ranging from taking no action to making major changes. Some of the options involve direct legislative action. Others are oriented to the actions of the execu- tive branch but involve congressional oversight or direction. The order in which the issues and options are presented should not imply their pri- ority. The options provided for each issue are not, for the most part, mutually exclusive: adopting one does not necessarily disqualify others in the same category or within another category; how- ever, changes in one area could have repercus- sions in others. Finally, and of critical impor- tance, many of the issues are more germane to certain sectors, such as human therapeutics, plant biotechnology, or hazardous waste man- agement. In those cases, specific issues and op- tions are presented at the end of chapters 9, 10, and 11.