For almost a century, entrepreneurs, policymakers and scientists have used the word biotechnology to describe imminent revolutions based on the application of biology. Yet although novel clusters of techniques, products, and promises were clearly momentous to visionaries, they repeatedly failed to achieve their foreseen potential.

The old frustration seemed to have been overcome in 1980 when the U.S. Supreme Court permitted the patenting of a transgenic bacterium that could consume oil spilled at sea. Many were enthused by the new development, and foreign governments felt that this was an American challenge they could not afford to duck. Although a few quaked before this new appropriation of science, the majority of commentators assumed that finally the subdivision and exploitation of the world of primitive living beings was about to begin. The possibility of patenting new organisms made by means of modern biological techniques and, in particular, the methods of recombinant DNA that had first been developed in the early 1970s would, it seemed, open up hitherto undreamed of possibilities. Rather than relying on traditional breeding, which entailed combining genes of animals and plants within the same species, genes could now be combined from across the entire spectrum of living organisms. At this moment, when an oil crisis suggested that old energy-intensive industries had had their day, and the success of electronics had demonstrated the possibility of a new industrial revolution, every major country created its own biotechnology plan.