Introduction: Managing the Tension between Science and Democracy — the Case of Public Engagement Processes

Abstract

Over the past three decades or so, the world has witnessed a number of scientific discoveries and technological innovations in biology, biotechnology and genetically based medicine. These are currently in the process of substantially transforming both food production and healthcare in technical as well as social terms. For those promoting the technologies, such developments hold promises of a better world, for the sceptics they entail Faustian dangers and embody a lot of what is wrong with the modern world. These diverging evaluations of the same technologies provide the material for what seems to be perpetual social controversy.