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The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA

"Asilomar Revisited: Lessons for Today?"

Joyce Passos made an interesting comment about technology that got me thinking. She said: "But once technology has found a way to operate on the natural world, rarely do the ethical issues surface in time to stem the tide. " For the most part I suspect she is right. But I also know of one noteworthy time when science and technology did pause to examine the safety and consequences of cutting edge work in recombinant DNA.

In the early 1970s scientists involved in recombinant DNA study realized that they had a potential tiger by the tail -- the prospect of what might happen if recombinant DNA (rDNA) of a Frankenstein nature were to "get loose". Over a couple of years the realization grew until prominent molecular biologists in 1973 called for a moratorium on rDNA work until safety issues could be threshed out.

In February 1975, the Asilomar Conference was held to discuss the relevant issues.  The conclusion of this scientific conference was that most rDNA work should continue, but appropriate safeguards in the form of physical and biological containment procedures should be put in place.

It doesn't seem very earth-shaking now, but at the time we knew virtually nothing about what might happen in splicing a piece of DNA from one organism into the genome of another, and worst-case scenarios abounded, mostly focused on the possibility of novel and virulent bacteria escaping their labs and devastating the country.

This report of a more recent (03 March 2000) Asilomar conference is germane to our consideration of GM foods as the following paragraphs indicate.

Asilomar occurred at a unique moment in biology. Researchers had just discovered how to cut and splice together the DNA of disparate species and were beginning to contemplate the cornucopia of experiments this opened up. "Recombinant DNA was the most monumental power ever handed to us," said California Institute of Technology president David Baltimore, one of the organizers of the 1975 meeting. "The moment you heard you could do this, the imagination went wild." But a number of scientists at the time raised concerns about whether such experiments might create dangerous new organisms, microscopic Frankensteins that could sneak out of the lab undetected on the sole of a Hush Puppy and threaten public health.

Those concerns triggered a "hectic experience" of scientific soul-searching that culminated in the 1975 Asilomar conference, recalled Stanford molecular biologist Paul Berg, another organizer of that meeting. Participants at a June 1973 Gordon Conference on Nucleic Acids had published a letter expressing concern about recombinant DNA research. In response, Berg led a committee of the National Academy of Sciences that in July 1974 took the unusual move of calling for a voluntary moratorium on certain types of recombinant DNA experiments until the hazards could be evaluated.

Berg and several colleagues organized the Asilomar meeting 7 months later to bring together "people who were engaged in the research or were likely or eager to use it." The organizers also brought in researchers with expertise in bacteria and viruses to help assess the potential hazards. A sense of urgency pervaded the meeting, in part because researchers were impatient to put the new technology to work. Although most of the participants suspected that there was no real hazard, Baltimore said, the stakes were clearly "too important to be wrong." The meeting's organizers decided not to address the ethical issues surrounding genetic alteration but to stick to safety issues they felt they could address as scientists. After much haggling, the group settled on a set of safety guidelines that involved working with disabled bacteria that could not survive outside the lab. The guidelines not only allowed the research to resume but also helped persuade Congress that legislative restrictions were not needed--that scientists could govern themselves.

The group that convened last month faced a very different set of circumstances. The technology that seemed like science fiction in 1975 is now commonplace and has yielded what Baltimore called "a remarkable harvest" of products and applications, such as genetically enhanced crops, tests for genetic diseases, and human gene therapy. Last month's meeting also had less of a sense of urgency because, for the most part, scientists consider these technologies safe.

But the public remains hugely concerned about the applications of genetic manipulation: Witness the recent protests in Europe over genetically modified crops. And society today is much more insistent on participating in the debate. "There are no important risks that scientists alone can assess," said Princeton University president Harold Shapiro, chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. "Scientists can make a great contribution, but they can't decide alone." [Emphasis added]

Would that our national leaders were as open to this kind of consultation and deliberation.

If you would like to know the summary outcome of the 1975 Asilomar Conference follow this link to David Berg and Maxine Sanger's succinct summary. How might such a summary read for today's GM food conference? Asilomar 1975 Summary

Posted by Donald Douglas at November 5, 2003 05:41 PM | TrackBack