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Correspondence

Nature 392, 221 (19 March 1998) | doi:10.1038/32514

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Some issues for the biosafety protocol

Henry I. Miller1, Charles J. Arntzen2, Roger N. Beachy3, R. James Cook4, Susanne L. Huttner5, Donald Kennedy6, Calvin O. Qualset7, Peter H. Raven8 & Anne K. Vidaver9

  1. Hoover Institution, Stanford, California, USA
    e-mail: Email: miller@hoover.stanford.edu
  2. Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, New York, USA
  3. Division of Plant Biology, Scripps Research Institute, USA
  4. Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University, USA
  5. University of California, Systemwide Biotechnology Program, Berkeley, California, USA
  6. Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, USA
  7. Genetic Resources Conservation Program, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California, USA
  8. Missouri Botanical Garden, and Washington University, USA
  9. Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska, USA

The letter from Crompton et al., describing themselves as "individuals involved in either the development or implementation of risk assessment frameworks for biotechnology" — regulations mandated by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) — illustrates perfectly the emerging problems of those efforts (Nature 391, 528; 1998).The authors assert that biosafety regulations should involve "the overt consideration of socioeconomic issues before the environmental release or transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms" (defined narrowly as those crafted with molecular techniques of genetic manipulation).