But it is also producing dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of disease, and offering new ways to reduce and clean up environmental pollution. There are few industrial sectors which are not either dependent on biotechnology as a source of innovation and growth already, or likely to become so in the next century. Cultural Revolution Biotechnology may be as old as human culture, but the explosion of scientific achievement, products and processes, and company formation and employment is relatively new. It is only 22 years since Genentech, the first successful biotech company, was founded. Such figures must be treated with caution.
People define it in different ways, so producing comparable statistics is almost impossible.
But it may be starting to catch up. National governments are putting huge effort into biotech development. Financial markets are being created, and venture capital funds are starting to invest in younger firms. It is not in Europe's long-term interests to raise expectations unduly, however. It took the US biotech sector five years to recover from the collapse of early enthusiasm in the equity markets.