Why Prince Charles is Wrong
Richard Dawkins has recently published an excellent article taking anti-biotech people to task. I couldn't agree with him more. Irrational fears of nuclear power have done incalculable damage to the United States. Irrational fears of biotech will do incalculable damage to the world, if we let it.
Good law on the subject may well be something to the effect of: “every new modification must be tested to the 15th generation.” That 15 number has no basis other than being (to me) suitably large; I have no training on the subject. I do think that making a matter of law a minimum number of generations an organism must be tested before being allowed into the population would do much to alleviate public fear.
I do believe that much of the fear comes from the unseeable nature of the technology. If the public is given transparency in the process, if not the outcome, that fear should dissipate...