Regulation, Risk and Knowledge

Abstract

has given rise to science policy studies as an area of academic inquiry, where commentators either propose methods for doing things better in future or reconstruct and explain sets of decisions that now lie in the past. This book falls into the latter category, as a painstaking depiction of the short, but complicated life of the Genetic Manipulation Advisory Group (GMAG) in the UK, set up in 1976 to regulate recombinant DNA research. In a sense it complements Sheldon Krimsky's account of similar discussions in the US and Watson's and Tooze's documentation of American scientists' heroic struggle against statutory regulation of their field in The DNA Story.' It is likely to become a standard source on this episode in UK science policy, although other comparative studies, particularly from Susan Wright, are in preparation. Certainly it would take real commitment to plough through committee papers and briefing documents, knowing that Bennett, Glasner and Travis had passed that