Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet

Intervention challenges two of the most sacred tenets of modern society, innovation and technology, from the perspective of the unique risks they present. Using genetic engineering as its model, it paints a vivid picture of the scientific uncertainties that biotech risk evaluations dismiss or ignore, and lays bare the power and money conflicts between academia, industry and regulators that have sped these risky innovations to the market. Intervention champions an alternative method for assessing the risks of technology, developed by the world's top risk experts, that can eliminate such conflicts, help regain public trust in science and government, and drive research and development toward more useful, safer products.

"Powerful and essential... Denise makes it clear how 'spectacularly nearsighted' we tend to be when evaluating radical new advances. And when we're meddling with the primary forces of nature — to quote Ned Beatty's speech from Network — we can't afford to be nearsighted. Fortunately, we have people like Denise Caruso to improve our vision." Steven Johnson, author of The Ghost Map

Denise Caruso is the co-founder and executive director of The Hybrid Vigor Institute, a not-for-profit research and consulting practice focused on collaborative research and problem-solving. Also a veteran technology journalist and analyst, she began covering the personal computer era in the early 1980s for a variety of trade and national publications. For the five years prior to founding Hybrid Vigor in 2000, Caruso wrote the Digital Commerce column for the New York Times.