Good or bad? New or old? The rich connotations of the word 'biotechnology' reflect a history that stretches back more than seventy years. To some, the concept describes the evolving crafts of industrial production using micro-organisms. To others, biotechnology is a product of the recombinant techniques only recently developed by molecular biologists. It has been seen simply as a means of wealth production and as a new kind of technology--sometimes as distinctively benevolent and at all other times as particularly dangerous.

Robert Bud shows how the hopes and fears for the combination of...