Mouse Cloning Begins Bio-Industrial Era

Jeremy Rifkin is author of The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World (Tarcher/Putnam,1998). Following Rifkins commentary is an interview with him by Michael Skafidas, editor of the Greek NPQ.

Washington - The recent announcement of the cloning of successive generations of a mouse represents a turning point in economic history. The University of Hawaii research team has, for the first time, successfully introduce bio-industrial design principles into the replication of complex living organisms, creating the prototype process for mass assembly line production of life. The coming together of recombinant DNA technology and the new cloning techniques allow life science companies to both customize genetic instructions into cells and mass produce countless copies of an original organism - or its individual parts - using the same kind of engineering principles and quality controls that were used by entrepreneurs more than 100 years ago when they perfected processes of mass production of industrial-based products.

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