New Biology and the Foundations of a Health Bioeconomy

Abstract

In 2004, scientists and entrepreneurs Craig Venter and Daniel Cohen, who together pioneered techniques to map the human genome, proclaimed that the twenty-first century would be defined by the biological sciences. They wrote: “While combustion, electricity and power defined scientific advance in the last century, the new biology of genome research … will define the rest” (Venter and Cohen, 2004: 73). Although reflecting a degree of hubris, the “century of biology” aphorism captures a shift in science and industrial policy and the emergence of a new Zeitgeist in the latter part of the twentieth century. Biology came to replace physics as the exemplar “big science.” The physical sciences had dominated science policy and political discourse for most of the century, and popular culture was defined by their perceived hazards, risks, and opportunities in finely balanced geopolitical contexts. Of course, in the context of commercial innovation, chemistry was predominant throughout the twentieth century. Furthermore, information and communication technologies (ICTs) brought major social and commercial transformations in the latter decades of the century. Nevertheless, the advent of new biology, and significant advances in life science technologies,¹ heightened expectations of a revolution in health care.