BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) has joined the EU public debate on the future of biotechnology and genetically modified organisms. In a statement released earlier this month, it pleaded for a more balanced debate, but acknowledges that the European scientific community has to do more to answer public concerns.

The statement is one of the first concrete manifestations of the European biotechnology sector's determination - articulated at the beginning of this year by the new board of the industry's trade association, EuropaBio - to fight back against public prejudice.

The EMBO - a purely scientific grouping of 900 molecular biologists who have been elected as individual members - repeats the familiar claims for biotechnology's merits, including medical breakthroughs such as the development of treatments for diabetes, and warns against the risks of uninformed hysteria.

"The current polarizing debate should be replaced by reasoned discussions," it said. Scientists must insist "that reason and fact temper attacks against science and research that arise in the GMO debate. Under no circumstances can terrorism replace rational discussion."

EMBO said biotechnology is a victim of public skepticism "strongly colored by ideological preconceptions and insufficient understanding," and by "a profound resistance to global agro-business" and legitimate public concerns over negligent monitoring of food safety and health hazards. And it accuses "eco-corporations" - it offers Greenpeace as an example - of deliberately generating "heightened consciousness" about GMOs as a prerequisite for their own survival.

But it calls for "more sensitivity to public concerns, saying molecular biologists need not only conduct research, but also continue communicating with the public about the benefits and risks."