A Licence to Breed Money
Ask any stockbroker which technologies are the hottest investments today and he'll probably say two words: chips and bugs. For just as the 70s created the chip millionaires, so the 80s are spawning a new breed of bug millionaires.
' Biotechnology ' has become the new buzzword for speculators, because biology has come out of the laboratory and into the market-place. Biologists are manipulating genes to produce custom-built bacteria ... living factories capable of making some of the most valuable products on earth. The Risk Business looks at the extraordinary growth of new companies at the frontiers of this technology and sees how they are scrambling to buy up the world's top microbiologists.
Yet there is a South Sea Bubble flavour to this speculation. Promises rather than products have raised millions. The science still has to prove its potential. And there is a more fundamental worry; some scientists fear that big business could alter the course of biological research for ever. Reporter Judith Hann
Film editor ANN LALIC
Executive producer JONATHAN CRANE Producers Oliver MORSE , DAVID DUGAN