In the 1960s and 1970s, German companies and laboratories
churned out futuristic technologies, from novel types of nuclear
reactors to the world's first magnetic-levitation train. In the
early 1980s, Germany was one of the first countries to develop a
national plan for genetics research, setting up labs in Munich,
Cologne, and Heidelberg. Per capita, German scientists applied
for more biotech patents than Americans did. Yet only a few
years later, German pharmaceutical companies like BASF and Bayer
postponed production plans and moved much of their research
abroad. Germany lost its spot at the cutting edge of biotech.
One reason was the pull of a powerful new startup culture that
had developed around American universities in the 1980s. But
there was a more sinister reason as well: a powerful coalition
of environmental activists, church leaders, politicians, and
journalists mobilized fears against medical biotechnology as a
dangerous meddling with nature, an attack on human dignity
reminiscent of Nazi eugenics