New technologies, whether they are in medicine, industry, or agriculture, often initially generate public skepticism. Nowhere is this currently more evident than in biotechnology, where issues of health and environment are hotly debated.

"Bioconservative intellectuals are fully cognizant of the tendency for our species to be suspicious of the new and the strange, and they clearly want to harness that suspicion as a strategy to restrain biotechnological progress," writes author Ronald Bailey in his 2005 book Liberation Biology.

But as Bailey points out, public opinion is highly changeable, and the benefits from technological progress are not always well understood. He cites in vitro fertilization and optical laser technologies as just two examples where the public had fears and/or doubts but now broadly supports the technologies and appreciates the huge gains from them.

This issue of Economic Perspectives explores some of the most promising applications of biotechnology, from microorganisms engineered to produce hydrogen gas from organic waste and bacteria engineered to break down environmental pollutants, to crops that add vitamins to what we eat and novel drugs for treating human diseases such as Alzheimer's and diabetes.

As National Science Adviser John Marburger writes in the introduction to this publication: "Our aim is not simply to understand disease, but to cure it; not only to consume whatever edible we find, but to make it safer, more nutritious; not just to harvest nature's random products for our manufacturers, but to make them stronger, safer, and more adapted to our needs."

We hope that readers will take the time to review each of the articles and gain from them a greater understanding of the tremendous potential that biotechnology offers for improving the quality of life for all people throughout the world.

The Editors