The art of writing warning labels requires a wealth of market and litigation experience. The warning rules greatly favor old products over new ones. Innovation germinates in small institutions. But success in the regulatory system requires a large stable of lobbyists and liability lawyers. So technology tends to proceed in small steps from established firms more than huge leaps from innovators.
Insurance aggravates the bias against innovators.
The availability of affordable insurance depends entirely on the accumulation of actuarial experience something all established technologies have and no truly innovative one ever does. U.S. utilities now go abroad to buy back improvements on the technology U.S. firms once sold. Last year the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia arranged research in Argentina to test a bovine rabies vaccine, and Oregon State University researchers chose New Zealand to test another bioengineered vaccine. Play it safe. Creative destruction the constant replacement of old social structures and technologies with new ones is the key to any civilization's survival.