BioWorld International Correspondent

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Consumer protection is not at risk from life sciences, but can positively benefit from it, David Byrne, European commissioner for health and consumer protection, said when he spoke at the Biovision conference in Lyon, France, on Thursday.

In an unusual presentation from a senior official whose role is primarily to champion consumer protection, he went a long way toward defending the case for industry and science, making clear that he was not convinced that the voice of the people was necessarily the voice of reason. "The issue of genetically modified organisms is among the most striking and indeed high-profile example of exaggerated risk perception within European society," he contended. "There is no known case of mortality from eating a GMO product, yet suspicion, paranoia and even outright hostility remains."

So while the policies he promotes in his job "are first and foremost people focused,'" he went on, "within my sphere of responsibility, science plays a key role." And in biotechnology, one of the scientific areas where consumer protection and caution has most predominated in public thinking in Europe, it is important to create conditions to allow progress, he said.

"Public perception of science can be difficult to predict and even more difficult to explain," Byrne said. "Frequently, it may seem to fly in the face of logic and rationality. Likewise, public perception of risk can seem similarly distorted. Some issues are broadly regarded as threatening, despite a lack of supporting evidence. On the other hand, some dangerous activities, for example smoking, where the risks are well established, often seem to be of less concern."

He took some comfort from the fact that some recent surveys of public attitudes in the European Union suggest "an apparent reversal of the trend observed over the past decade, when public optimism about biotechnology was in decline." It was "encouraging," he claimed, that the latest poll of more than 16,000 people across the member states showed 44 percent of those who expressed an opinion were optimistic about biotechnology, with only 17 percent pessimistic. The remainder were neither optimistic nor pessimistic.