Both people within the research community and on the interested edges agree that UW-Madison must be open and receptive to public comment on its role in the biotechnology revolution, or else risk its credibility as a public university. People are suspicious. They want an honest discussion of risk, and they want issues that are not normally considered scientifically valid to be on the table. Kloppenburg adds that any debate about the merits of biotechnology should include a real exploration of alternative technologies and even non-technological ways of solving the same problems. How we use things is a social question.
Technology is a social creation, and economies are social creations.
They work by our rules. Sussman says those are legitimate questions, and ones that scientists are also anxious to deal with. They're treading into great uncertainty, he says, where it takes some courage and risk tolerance to take the next step forward. After countless interviews on the subject, Sussman has become quite adept with metaphors for biotechnology. To illustrate his point about the double-edged nature of uncertainty, he wonders what it must have been like to be one of the pioneers in electricity.