Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972-1982

The early promise of genetic engineering triggered a host of social and political concerns. In Molecular Politics, Susan Wright draws on government records, archival materials, and a wide range of interviews to analyze how the American and British governments responded to these concerns and to the struggles among corporations, scientists, universities, trade unions, and public interest groups for control of this controversial technology. Advancing an original approach to the expression of power in policymaking, she provides the first comparative study of a crucial set of policy decisions and explores their implications for the political economy of contemporary science.