By Naomi Charalambakis, Director of Science Policy at Americans for Medical Progress
We invite you to read a special commentary by Naomi Charalambakis, Director of Science Policy at Americans for Medical Progress, on how Germany’s biotechnology missteps in the 1990s offer urgent lessons for U.S. biomedical research today.
History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes are clear. In the early 1990s, Germany constrained the growth of its emerging biotechnology sector. In 2025, the United States risks a comparable setback in biomedical research and academic support, one that could have potentially greater global consequences.
The story of modern biotechnology began in the early 1970s, when U.S. scientists Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer developed the technology of recombinant DNA. By cutting and splicing DNA into bacteria, they showed how foreign genes could be replicated inside living cells. This breakthrough revolutionized biomedicine, catapulting the biotechnology and genetic engineering industry into a new era.
Within a decade, recombinant insulin reached patients, the first recombinant vaccines were approved, and food production was transformed with genetically engineered enzymes. The commercial potential was vast.
Germany, however, faced mounting opposition to biotechnology. Environmental groups and a powerful Green movement denounced genetic engineering as unnatural and unsafe. In 1990, Germany enacted the Genetic Engineering Act (Gentechnikgesetz). The law required government approval for every biotech project, even those using well-characterized organisms and posing negligible risk. Approval processes became arduous: endless paperwork, formal hearings, and sometimes even public consultation for routine lab work.
The effects were immediate. Research slowed, lawsuits multiplied, and uncertainty grew—a combination that hampers research, innovation, and the economy as a whole. Recognizing the scientific opportunity in biotechnology and genetic engineering, German companies shifted abroad, establishing divisions in Boston, California, and the United Kingdom.
One of the clearest examples of the ripple effects of restrictive, fear-driven policy is seen in the German company Hoechst. Once a global leader in chemicals and pharmaceuticals, Hoechst was unable to secure approval for its recombinant insulin until 1999—seventeen years after U.S.-based Genentech had launched its version. In the interim, Germany’s knowledge base fractured, its talent drained, and its standing in the life sciences industry diminished.
The U.S. took a different path. Rather than mandating broad, overly restrictive laws for this work, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created biosafety guidelines that classified experiments by risk. Oversight was delegated to local Institutional Biosafety Committees, escalating only higher-risk work to federal review. This decentralized, risk-based framework created clarity without stifling innovation. As a result, commercialization accelerated, lawsuits were avoided, and America surged ahead as the global leader in biotechnology. The benefits were not only scientific but economic: new firms, thriving regional clusters, and global dominance in a high-margin, high-growth industry.
Today, U.S. biomedical research faces a similar inflection point. Recent initiatives and cuts by the administration, not only are disrupting the research ecosystem but are jeopardizing the progress that has been achieved. Federal research grants have been cancelled mid-stream, wasting years of work and valuable resources on animals, staff, and costly reagents. Executive orders have frozen already-appropriated funds, upending researchers’ careers and ability to plan future studies. Agencies have been abruptly reorganized, removing certain offices without regard for policy implications or consultation with those stakeholders. Indirect-cost recovery—the financial mechanism that keeps laboratories functioning—has been targeted repeatedly, threatening medical progress and imputing significant damage to future research. Executive Orders are undermining the unbiased peer review process, mandating that politically appointed officials have the power to erode the foundation of scientific integrity and steer it toward ideological aims.
The result is paralysis by uncertainty. In this climate, signals alone can be as damaging as outright bans. If grants are cancelled once, institutions assume they can be cancelled again. If one agency is reorganized overnight, others may be next. Risk becomes systemic. For biomedical research, which requires long timelines, heavy upfront investment, and fragile infrastructure, such volatility is corrosive. Training pipelines, core facilities, and collaborative networks are disrupted alongside individual projects.
The economic consequences are profound. Capital becomes wary of unstable jurisdictions and shifts to regions with more predictable policies. Researchers, too, look abroad, just as German scientists did in the 1990s. Europe, China, and Singapore are already investing strategically in biotechnology and health technology, eager to attract talent and shape the standards that will govern intellectual property, regulatory norms, and market access. America risks turning from a magnet for capital and expertise into a source of brain drain.
The consequences extend well beyond laboratories. Biomedical innovation supports pharmaceutical exports, complex supply chains, and health services, and feeds local startup ecosystems. Weakening this sector erodes one of the most dynamic drivers of U.S. growth. Private and philanthropic funders and collaborators, concerned about “regime risk,” may anchor their capital elsewhere. Even modest cuts to trusted agencies such as NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) corrode the regulatory clarity that institutions, businesses, and foreign partners depend on.
Germany’s mistake in the 1990s was to let politics dictate science. The result was a generation of lost leadership in a field that transformed the world economy. In 2025, America risks making the same error in a far more competitive global environment.
The lesson is clear: if we want to preserve America’s crown jewel—biomedical research, knowledge generation, and the innovation that drives economic growth, improves health, and transforms lives—we need policies that champion scientific inquiry and innovation, rather than letting fear and politics dictate which discoveries are allowed to flourish. Only by empowering, not constraining, discovery can we secure the U.S.’s future as the world leader in science and technology.
