While many scientists are highly enthusiastic about the endless possibilities offered through biotechnology research, a new UC Davis study indicates that the public is far less supportive of biotech than first believed. A recent statewide consumer survey of nearly 800 California households, conducted by Cooperative Extension economist Desmond Jolly, revealed that more than two-thirds of those households sampled were opposed to, for example, gene transfers between a tadpole and a plant. Biotech research involving "higher" life forms and more complex organisms, such as gene transfer between humans and plants or animals, received even less support. The study's results, to be published this month, clearly show that people are seriously concerned about where biotechnology is headed, says Jolly. Those concerns, he adds, could eventually lead to consumers rejecting, for ethical or other reasons, the products and processes developed through biotech research.