Abstract
Manufacturers of the products of biotechnology confront a variety of risks in making decisions regarding how to allocate research and development budgets. This paper explores the importance of one such factor: the prospect of consumer resistance based on real or imagined harms to consumers or the environment, and/or philosophical opposition to particular biotechnologies. A survey of the Canadian biotechnology industry provides evidence that a majority of manufacturers take potential controversies into account in funding decisions. However, even in those industries in which controversies are most likely to arise, potential controversy plays a minor role compared to other determinants of research and development budgets.
Jeffrey G. Macintosh is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, 78 Queen’s Park, Toronto, Canada, M5S 2C5. E-mail: j.macintosh@utoronto.ca. Douglas J. Cumming is a LL.B./Ph.D. student at the Institute for Policy Analysis, University of Toronto, 140 St. George Street, Toronto, Canada, M5S 3G6. E-mail: dcumming@chass.utoronto.ca.
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Macintosh, J.G., Cumming, D.J. (1998). Consumer Controversy and the Funding of Biotechnology Research. In: Knoppers, B.M., Mathios, A.D. (eds) Biotechnology and the Consumer. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5311-3_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5311-3_14
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