Overburdening risk: Policy frameworks and the public uptake of gene technology

Abstract

This paper examines the controversy that surrounded plans by Hoechst to build a facility in Germany to manufacture human insulin using gene technology. Social and political factors that framed lay and expert understandings of gene technology and attitudes to risk in the dispute will be examined. It is argued that the formal regulatory and dispute resolution arenas privileged a technical-risk-as-rational-choice model of decision making as the "natural" ordering of risk and the understanding of gene technology in the dispute. This had the effect of overburdening technical risk as the cause of the controversy, leading to an asymmetrical treatment of scientific and non-scientific knowledge and drawing the facility's opponents into the very discourse on gene technology they wanted to challenge. In the end, the policy procedures were unsuccessful in resolving the controversy because they failed to address many of the issues that the public and the opponents regarded as important.