Biotechnology and Open University Science

An assessment of whether commercial application of molecular genetics is poisoning the academic well from which it emerged, & whether circumstances deemed essential to successful commercialization can coexist in any measure with the professed academic ideal of pristine & mutually shared truth. Solid evalution of what is happening today is hard to come by. Anecdotal accounts from the early 1980s abound in suggesting dire effects of activities of faculty members who oscillate between academic & industrial laboratories. Certainly new symbiotic arrangements between biotechnology firms & academic or quasiacademic laboratories came into existence during that period. As yet there are no available results of serious studies of those developments; such studies are needed. Meanwhile, primary responsibility appears to be with U faculties, exerting their considerable capability to evaluate activities of their colleagues. A series of new affirmations also may be called for -- restating the U role in assuring open inquiry & information flow. Vigorous intellectual exchange -- always under threat from multiple sources -- has been the foundation of scientific & technological advance & remains central to the human future. Modified AA.