Lateness is the principle cause of time-keeping grouches, but not in biotechnology. In our every day lives, we are incensed by trains delays, offended by correspondence impromptly returned, inconvenienced by deadlines missed, deflated by unmet company projections, and chided for anniversaries deprioritized. However, the complaint from the general public about biotechnology is “Too soon” rather than “Too late.”

Compare the emergence of the e-world with that of modern biotechnology. The plug-and-play office-in-a-pocket did not emerge overnight. Computers rather drifted toward us. Mystical and distant tape-spinning room-sized calculators became trundling office green-screens, which in turn became graphics-led machines, which in turn became miniature devices refined to suit the needs and pocket of the home user. Even when the monsters first left their clean rooms, their introduction into the wider environment was reassuringly supervised. White-coated former operators found employment in IT support, conducting themselves in a cooperative and friendly manner to empower users and allay technophobia. Kids met computers at school, under supervision, and then sought electronic games as maintenance-free pets.

The domestication of the computer took forty years, half a human life time, two or three generations. Even now, home computer owners are still in the minority in industrialized nations. Biotechnology, in contrast, has arrived instantaneously and its penetration into the everyday world, while not as pervasive as computers, is nonetheless impressive.

Human insulin followed recombinant DNA by less than a decade and it dominated the diabetes market within a few years. Genetically manipulation in plants took longer—around a decade and a half from concept to commercial crop—but the products found their way in a matter of months into every food store. The Human Genome Project will have taken less than 15 years and most people will have noticed it only over the past five. Its impacts on healthcare, for better or worse, should be universal in the developed world within half a generation.

Biotechnologies arrive fully formed at the consumer, packaged neatly, and presented by smiling suits: sans white coat, sans help line, sans instruction manual. When they work as the consumer wants, all is well. When they don't, there is a problem.

At least some of the resentment for biotechnology from the general public has stemmed from the fact that product development times are shorter than human generational times: we can no longer rely on formal education to inform and acclimatize the populace.

There are two possible solutions to this asynchrony. One is to slow down research and development (unlikely to be a popular move in the scientific community, nor a sensible one). The other, of course, is to accelerate the introduction of the public to new biotechnologies. To accomplish this, marketing must reach back through the entire R&D process. And as we have insisted in this space on numerous occasions, it is imperative that scientists invent, and companies invest in, innovative ways to share knowledge with the public well before they ask them to use their products.