Attitudes towards genetic engineering between change and stability: Results of a panel study

Abstract

Genetic engineering is not only a new modern technology but it is also a social object of technological assessment research. Genetic engineering is associated with moral and ethical concerns in society, political decisions, ecological impacts, and economics. These impacts are the foundation for the social linkages of genetic engineering. For that social linkages and cognitive association we have chosen the theory of social representation of technology as a framework for analysing attitudes towards genetic engineering. We present the results about the perception of genetic engineering for lay people and discourse actors on three levels of applications: genetic engineering in general, four sectors (human genetics, farm animal genetics, microbe genetics and crop plants genetics) and several specific applications in health, medicines, protection of the environment, agriculture and laboratory research. The panel design allowed us to analyse the constancy and change of attitudes. We also looked for a correlation with individual value-orientation such as religion, political orientation, risk perception, and evaluation of technology.