The State of Biotechnology
Implications of the Bush Principles
By Nigel M. de S. Cameron
February 14, 2006

In a remarkable passage in the 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush set out his most comprehensive policy agenda on biotechnology and human life. Despite the depressingly predictable lack of press coverage, the logic of the four principles presented by the President may yet cut through the heedless and foolhardy assumptions about the human future that have driven much of the biotech industry and pressured its political friends—especially in the United States. With the sad and single exception of the United Kingdom, every other major Western state has moved further toward the development of policies that enable ethical biotech to flourish. The need is urgent for the President’s call to be answered in a legislative agenda that will help free the U.S. biotech industry from a dark stain of unethical conduct.

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