OPINION/COMMENTARY

Biotech: Enormous Potential Compromised by Self-Interest, Bad Science, and Excessive Government Regulation

In The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution, food safety experts Henry Miller and Gregory Conko have written a brilliant account of how self-interest, bad science, and excessive government regulation have profoundly compromised the potential of the new biotechnology. This book is a call to action for policymakers to resist a destructive political process that is currently denying enormous potential benefits to consumers throughout the world. The authors make a persuasive case not only that the benefits of food biotechnology far exceed the risks, but also that there has been an abject failure in the formulation of public policy. The result has been, they argue, gross over-regulation of the technology and its products, disincentives to research and development, and fewer choices and inflated prices for consumers....