Biotechnology --Fuel, Food and Medicine

Biotechnology --Fuel, Food and Medicine



From sky gasoline prices, global warming, food shortages, and disease, the world faces a number of major problems. More than 20,000 scientists gathered at the 2008 Biotechnology Industry Organization's convention in San Diego to focus on new ways to solve them. Fuel made from weeds, mapping the cancer genome to find new cancer treatments, developing disease and cold resistant-crops were some of the major topics under discussion. Jim Greenwood, President and CEO, of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, calls biotechnology scientists "perpetual optimists." "We refuse," he says, "to accept that there is nothing we can do. We envision a world free of disease, free of hunger, and free of pollution." BIO represents 1,200 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, and state biotechnology centers across the United States and in more than 30 other countries. The industry, one of the few bright spots in a dismal economy, is expected to do for the 21st Century what computers did for the 21st Century. It will have a major impact on the fuel we use, the food we eat and the medicines we take