Asilomar

From Concerns to Recommendations

Asilomar, rather than an event sparked by new developments in biology, can be seen as initiated because of the unknowns that accompanied those developments. In the early 1970s, researchers discovered how to cut and splice together the DNA of disparate species, and there were growing concerns about whether such experiments might create dangerous new organisms. One of the key figures in the Asilomar story was the chair of the conference, Paul Berg, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University Medical Center, who had been working with recombinant DNA technology. In an experiment in 1972, he cut into fragments (or cleaved) the SV40 (monkey virus); then he cleaved another virus (bacteriophage lambda). He then spliced the DNA of the two viruses together. His plan was to place the new genetic material into a laboratory strain of the E. coli bacterium. However, he did not continue with the experiment due to fears, prompted by his colleagues, that the product of his work might escape into the environment, infecting the workers in the laboratory.

Such concern about potential biohazards associated with recombinant DNA technology prompted a group of scientists to write to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) requesting an ad hoc committee be formed to investigate the risks involved. A committee was established by the NAS, and it recommended convening an international conference of practitioners to explore the matter, as well as a temporary moratorium on all recombinant DNA experiments.

Asilomar can thus be seen as developing from concerns among scientists themselves. The Asilomar conference produced and published principles for dealing with the risks and recommendations for containment. These principles proposed that containment issues should always be taken into consideration in designing experiments using recombinant DNA and that containment effectiveness should reflect the estimated risk involved as well as possible.

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