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Genetic Dreams, Genetic Nightmares

Genetic Dreams, Genetic Nightmares: Episode 2

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Genetic Dreams, Genetic Nightmares, Episode 2

How genetic engineering became big business.

GM crops and human hormones from microbes.  Matthew Cobb explores the hopes and fears when commercial products of genetic engineering were launched into the world.

Professor Matthew Cobb looks at how genetic engineering became big business - from the first biotech company that produced human insulin in modified bacteria in the late 1970s to the companies like Monsanto which developed and then commercialised the first GM crops in the 1990s. Were the hopes and fears about these products of genetic engineering realised?

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The story of the controversial birth of genetic engineering in the early 1970s.

Fifty years ago, as scientists attempted the first experiments in genetic engineering, other researchers sounded the alarm. Matthew Cobb talks to the founders of the GM age.

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