KOSEN 한인과학기술자네트워크

Biological Resource Centres: Underpinning the Future of Life Sciences and Biotechnology appears 19 years after the OECD's first report on biotechnology (Biotechnology - International Treands and Perspectives, 1982) when experts and policy circles were still wondering whether this new technology was just one new tool in the changing toolkit of the chemicals industry, or whether it had perhaps more far-reaching significance. Biological Resource Centres appears at the beginning of what has been called the "century of the life sciences" and in a radically different intellectual environment. The turn-about in political and public perception began in1999-2000. triggered by the crisis over genetically modified food in Europe and the sequencing of the human genome. There is now little doubt that the breakthroughs in biotechnology, genomics and genetics will affect our societies and many aspects of our life as profoundly as information technologies have already done. However, there is still only scanty awareness that biotechnology will lead to many chanages in government policy, public information, law, education and the scientific and technological infrastructure. This report alerts policy makers and the public to the fact that the framework conditions of the new technology, its scientific and technological infrastructure and its raw materials differ greatly from those that underpinned earlier technologies. Understanding of these differences will be essential if the technology is to developsuccessfully. How do we move from technologies based on mineral resources (metals, coal, oil, etc.) and on physics, chemistry and engineering to technologies increasingly based on biological resources and, more particularly, on something that is essentially invisible - the living cell and its genes?