Perspective: regulating genetic engineering: the limits and politics of knowledge

For many people based in the United Kingdom, as we are, memories of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, remain vivid. We recall, in particular, that during the decade after the identification of the disease in 1986, the British government and representatives of the cattle industry asserted that BSE was, in effect, substantially equivalent to the familiar disease of sheep and goats called scrapie, which was then widely assumed to be harmless to humans. Although some control measures were taken, BSE infectivity was allowed to remain in our food supply. And as we tragically learned, BSE could be transmitted to humans, in a brain-wasting form called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. According to government statistics, 177 Britons died of this lingering disease through June 2014.