Behind the Genetics Controversy

Why care about recombinant DNA? John Lear's new book explains passionately and convincingly why people who don't know the first thing about genetics should care about genetic research.

Although most nonscientists have never understood or never cared about the recombinant DNA research battle, the debate over the safety of such genesplicing experiments has polarized the scientific community and the public with government caught in the middle.

The political wrangling that has surrounded recombinant DNA experiments has forced scientists to face the issue of accountability to the public that funds their experiments. Lear documents how some scientists have struggled to avoid this responsibility, and his detailed presentation of the political battle as well as his clear explanation of its scientific background make this book important reading for the layman.

Very few non-scientists understand the history and principles of recombinant DNA experimentation, and the book strives to fill the reader in on it although in somewhat excruciating detail.

Recombinant DNA research, or, as it is nicknamed, gene-splicing, involves the combination of DNA, the basic material of heredity, from different organisms to create a hybrid organism with very different and unpredictable charcteristics. The DNA introduced into the experimental organism will dictate different genetic information when the organism reproduces, thus creating a different organism.

The experimentation is potentially hazardous largely because of its unpredictability; an experiment could result in bacteria which produce insulin or the creation of new strains of dangerous bacteria that resist antibiotics. Often, the DNA is inserted into the E. coli bacteria, which live in the human gut, but if these hybrid organism were to escape from the laboratory, they could enter the human body and resist its normal immunological defenses. To their credit, scientists engaged in this research were the first to sound the alarm in the early '70s. Lear traces the chain of events that led to regulation of DNA research based upon these scientists' recommendations, and documents these scientists' retreat from the principle of DNA research regulation. Lear is at his best when describing the intricacies of the political maneuvers. He demonstrates a flair for anecdotes that succinctly capture a particular scientists's personality or motivation.

Lear pegs 1971 as the year when scientists began to question the safety of certain kinds of recombinant DNA research. As a result of a few scientists' conscientious probing, researchers gathered for a series of conferences in which they discussed the potential hazards of gene-splicing. Slowly and increasingly acrimoniously,they drew up guidelines recommending a voluntary moratorium on certain kinds of recombinant DNA research and setting up standards for physical and biological safety precautions for investigators to observe in different categories of experiments. These conferences proved the basis for the 1976 National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines. Since NIH funds many scientists' research, these suggested guidelines have the force of mandatory regulations.

However, as Lear convincingly shows, the scientists' attitudes towards the public marred the apparent nobility of the discussions. Most of these conferences remained either closed to the press or operated with unusual rules of confidentiality which served to inhibit public discussion and understanding of recombinant DNA research. Moreover, many scientists did not even consider the public's right to have input to regulating research that could cause them harm. Dissenting scientists, those who questioned most closely the hazards of such research, were not invited to the conferences.

Folly in Cambridge

Events in Cambridge and at Harvard in late 1976 and 1977 demonstrated all too clearly the folly of the scientists' oversight. Lear describes the controversy that pitted Harvard scientists and administrators against the Cambridge City Council as originating with Harvard's proposal for a new special containment laboratory which would conform to the new NIH guidelines -- the same lab scheduled to open here in a few days. At a hostile and emotional City Council meeting, the scientists confronted the Cambridge community. After the dust settled, the council imposed a three-month moratorium on all recombinant DNA research in Cambridge while the Cambridge Experimental Review Board drew up the present city ordinance.

The Cambridge confrontation shocked scientists -- especially Harvard ones -- into protecting what they saw as an infringement on academic freedom of inquiry. As Lear documents, however, the scientists used questionable methods in their concern to preven "housewives," as they put it, from interfering with their work.

These actions were prompted by an understandable fear of serious interference in scientific research. However, Lear pinpoints a contradiction in many scientists' stand against regulation: these same scientists stand to profit considerably from their research through shares in corporations they set up to market their research. More fundamentally, scientists used their considerable lobbying influence to circumvent the principle that the people who pay for their experiments have a right to be protected from harm and to contribute to the decision-making process.

Good as Lear's book is in documenting the political maneuverings, it nevertheless suffers from certain organizational and stylistic flaws. Although his prose is generally smooth and well-crafted, he occasionally goes into inordinate scientific detail that would discourage all but the most intrepid layman from finishing his book.

A more serious problem involves Lear's tendency to include his own actions and motivations in the narrative. Besides its jarring stylistic effect, he does not need to interject his experiences with recalcitrant scientists to prove his point.

Nevertheless, Recombinant DNA, The Untold Story thoroughly documents a tale that needed telling. Non-scientists should assume more responsibility for keeping themselves informed of developments within the scientific community. In the case of recombinant DNA, Lear echoes many scientists' calls for risk-assessment experiments so the debates on safety can be based on fact rather than speculation. The recombinant DNA battle shows that scientists and the public should not confront one another, but should cooperate to achieve a mutually beneficial goal, the original goal of science--the betterment of the human condition.