Europe's latest public opinion poll shows concern yet optimism toward emerging technologies and new fields within science. A clear optimistic trend appears in this latest report, "Europeans and biotechnology in 2010 Winds of change?". This is of course balanced with a public concern for safety and a need for further public awareness on some topics. Taken from a sample of 32 European countries and conducted in February 2010, this survey show a comprehensive trend to better understand the risks and benefits of the technology.

Some of the more "uneasy" topics were synthetic biology and genetically modified foods. GM foods face open criticism, with 3 to 1 opposition, and none of the 32 countries polled had a majority of supporters for GM foods. Synthetic biology and nanotechnology both suffered from a lack of public understanding, and respondents who were aware of the technologies wanted to hear more about the benefits and risks associated with nanotechnology.

Get the full survey report:
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_341_winds_en.pdf

A report to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research by
George Gaskell*, Sally Stares, Agnes Allansdottir, Nick Allum, Paula Castro,
Yilmaz Esmer, Claude Fischler, Jonathan Jackson, Nicole Kronberger,
Jürgen Hampel, Niels Mejlgaard, Alex Quintanilha, Andu Rammer,
Gemma Revuelta, Paul Stoneman, Helge Torgersen and Wolfgang Wagner.