The public is inescapably involved in biosafety risk assessment. In some countries, members of
public interest groups may sometimes be members of national or local committees and may be
answerable to local communities, labour organizations, or bodies with a special interest in e.g.,
environmental issues. More generally the public at large may control through its political
representatives the funding of basic science and, through the market place, the likelihood of
commercial developments flowing from biotechnological advances. There is hence a twofold
need: to ensure that the public is meaningfully informed of the nature and possible consequences
of biotechnology, and to be able to ascertain and act on public concerns.
The language in which public involvement is discussed can distort thinking in this area. The
impact of public perceptions on commercial biotechnology cannot be gauged purely scientifically
since the perceptions may be founded on considerations that are scientifically unsound or are
unrelated to science itself. Hence the notion of "educating the public" will have patronizing
overtones for some readers and may founder if the nature of public concern is not fully
understood or may become meaningless where the public in question sees an ethical principle at
stake. Likewise the notion of "legitimate public concern" raises the question of what is legitimate.
Yet biotechnologists can point to the Asilomar meeting (where scientists called for a voluntary
moratorium on gene splicing research) as indicating a concern among pioneering scientists,
perhaps unique, about the social consequences of their work. The so-called Eurobarometer
surveys (1991 and 1993) indicate that those Europeans who believed that biotechnology makes a
positive contribution to life is around 50%, although within this figure there are sharp differences
between different EU countries. These same surveys, however, showed that most respondents
answered incorrectly one or more questions designed to be value-free (e.g. "Are there test tube
babies which develop entirely outside the mother's body?"). A similar lack of understanding is
shown by a US sample questioned about clinical trials: almost half thought that the reason for
keeping a group of subjects as controls in a drug trial was to save them from the risk of being
poisoned.
It has been suggested that there are three types of public audience:
- Those with little scientific literacy, who are unlikely to be reached either by scientific argument
or by otherwise persuasive public advocacy groups.
- Those who are highly scientifically literate: these will form their own informed opinion and will
also be insusceptible to those advocacy groups that base their appeal on various types of
prejudice.
- Those who are intermediate between the above two. These will understand (at least up to a
point) the issues under debate, but advocacy groups will contribute in a greater or lesser
degree to their judgement.
It is this last group that is most likely to be reached by "educational" initiatives designed to inform
opinion. In countries with a high level of general education and a strong democratic tradition, this
group will not only be large but is most likely to be represented on decision-making bodies. As
suggested by the EU findings, however, the widely differing views on biotechnology taken by
countries with similar levels of public awareness indicates that the debate is a real one and that it
is misleading to search for a "right" answer. The dilemma has led to fluctuations in time in the
levels of regulation imposed by governments: at its extreme is the view that there is no necessity
to conduct risk assessment experiments to ensure confidence about field testing of new plant
varieties.
Whatever the prevailing public attitude, it is certain that risk assessment deliberations that are
seen as secretive (or worse, scientists who neglect to inform biosafety committees of their
proposed work or who ignore the advice given them) will result in damage to public relations.
Some regulations require that notice of a field trial be given in prescribed form in the local press,
and a climate of good relations with the media generally is often seen as worth the time and effort
involved.
