Transnationalizing Recombinant-DNA Regulation: Between Asilomar, EMBO, the OECD, and the European Community

摘要

Today, it is widely perceived that regulatory regimes in most policy fields are increasingly adopting transnational and global features (Reinicke, 1998; Zuern, 2000). Genetic engineering, biotechnology, and related fields, such as cloning or xenotransplantation, provide excellent examples of this trend. But, while many important policy decisions are increasingly made in contexts beyond national control, we also see the emergence of trans- or supra-national actors such as the World Trade Organization or the European Union that seem to represent new modes of institutionalizing the developing transnational modes of governance. From the 1970s, a whole new and powerful political infrastructure beyond the nation-state has thus come into existence that plays a key role for the dissemination of science and technology into society.