Pantechnicon; Dna

Good evening and welcome to your nightly magazine on entertainment the arts and ideas. I'm gonna start tonight we continue with our three part series on the proposed facility at Harvard University's biological laboratory and evolving the research on recumbent DNA. It's become a very controversial issue for many reasons certain on a local level but it also raises the broader questions of how much right does any community have and having scientific research being conducted in their own town. And what are the responsibilities of scientists to communicate information on their work to the public when the public may not completely understand technical involvement. Recently we taped a roundtable discussion here at WGBH with people. Representing various viewpoints since even among the scientific community there are differing opinions as to the issues at this point in time. No conclusions have been reached tonight and tomorrow night's discussion are merely the first step in an examination of this project. Our guest tonight Mayor Alfred Baluchi of Cambridge. Dr. Jonathan King Professor of Biology at MIT and a member of the group science for the people. Also on the panel Dr. Bernard Davis of

the Harvard School of Medicine and a specialist in bacterial genetics along with Dr. Edward Cass of the Harvard Medical School and a specialist in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Perhaps Dr. Kass since you are on the other side of the table that was giraffe with you. Well the issue is can we find lots of ways I just put them the way I see them both. I think one of the biggest single issues is the fear of the unknown. I think science has been looked upon as a black box the mad scientist image. The different perceptions of responsibility and the responsibility that have gone through many generations. And each major new discovery that has potentially harmful implications means most discoveries can be looked upon as encouraging but not benefits or is not harm. It's tense on which seems to be in the ascendancy of any moment. I happen to be chairman of the House Committee on Space Medicine of the Space

Science Board during the Apollo program and we have to face many times the question of who needs that trip to the moon if we have to put up all these big complicated barriers to the return of any possible infectious agent that might have been there for millions of years and might decimate the population and a great deal of thought an unreasonable amount of expense went into safeguarding the public against any such return. People like myself work daily with infectious agents. Some of them have very great variance. We've learned to do this over the last hundred years with a high level of safety. And we do this levy every day of our lives. I noticed that much of the fear of working with things that might be dangerous and harmful have come from people who aren't trained to work with dangerous materials and who have not even learned how to do so. And I think ignorance is a very large factor

in this whole process. Fear I think most fear represents a level of ignorance and yet I don't want to minimize the fact that in this whole field of public polarization the united with the recombination at the end there is a very real element of genuine danger however remote just as it was in the space program a real element of genuine danger but extremely remote. I think too there been other issues raised which we ought to try to separate from the purely scientific one and that is that sometimes large public issues of these sort become political weapons and sometimes the political attributes of the subject. Take precedence over the intrinsic merit of the prize. OK so I think we ought to be very well aware that the subject has political ramifications that may or may not be helpful or harmful to certain individuals or certain groups of individuals. Quite apart from the intrinsic problem of whether work should go on in the recombination field. So I think we have

to keep these very much in line but my some nation situation which I'm sure I'll come back to is that there are real dangers and there's a real basis for the fear of much of the fear has been grossly overstated. And much of it is reality. On the other hand the people who've worked with dangerous materials for a very large part of their professional lives have learned how to work with them effectively. And it's interesting that up until now almost none such people have been involved in this controversy most people like myself have a kind of amused benign tolerance of a lot of the noise because we do this all day long and lovely seems to be worrying about us. I called everyone's attention the fact that when people wanted to work with diphtheria and wanted to work with rabies. And one of the work with typhoid fever in many communities they were told to be cast out. Not committed to work for fear that the plague would pass through the community and we've now learned that these are not necessary fears although there are reality and there are reality to the public to a degree the public should be informed of what's going on. And to me

the public should be absolutely assured in any reasonable way that these dangerous materials can be reasonably contained. Dr Dennis I'd like to reinforce Dr. Kessler's message that the problem is really not a problem. Primarily unlike our biology it's a problem an infectious disease and there's a long history of gathering of information and infectious disease. And curiously people with a knowledge of that history and of the techniques involved have had very little to do with any of the discussion that's gone on so far. To expand one of the points he made I could find you editorials in Colorado newspapers around 1900 expressing horror at the suggestion that sanatorium be set up in Colorado for fear that everybody in the state is going to get tuberculosis if you let these tuberculosis people come here some what they're after it cooled down and people in Turkey and in Colorado were glad to have the income that came from the rest of the country to

Colorado in support of those sanatorium. Now it's very easy for anybody to set up a hypothetical scenario and say How can you prove that this terrible thing might not happen and that terrible thing might not happen but we can't rule our lives by that way in that way and so we always have to come back to the question. How much probability is there that this could happen just saying it that you can't prove that it couldn't happen to isn't a useful way of approaching the problem so I'm very much confronted with the question what kind of basis can we find for the best judgement we can now make as to how dangerous this procedure or the set of procedures is like to debate and I think this brings up a related question that has to the best of my knowledge hardly come up so far in the discussion at all. How really novel are the kinds of organisms that people are proposing to make. And I would like at a later time to expand on what will be. Perhaps my meaning for its competition to this my conviction that these organisms are very much less novel than one thinks because while they haven't been made in the laboratory before.

I would like to present arguments that nature has been making this general kind of organism organisms in which human DNA has been taken up into bacteria for millions of years at least for as long as human beings have been around. And since in my opinion the novelty is not so extraordinary such and such organisms have appeared before and been tested in the crucible of evolution. Then I cannot share the feeling that they are so unknown that we absolutely must treat them as potentially extraordinarily dangerous until proven. Otherwise. As to the question. That you raised and that then I think balanced with these considerations that there are dangers as Dr. Katz said. But that we may on balance decide that they are not as great as they have been cracked up to be by some people. Then we have to balance this against the question what's the loss. If you don't do this research or if you postpone the research and I think we must before we're through spend some time on the question what are the actually the potential gains from this research and what will be the losses if it is inhibited or discard story been prevented.

And finally on the question you raise in the start of the local involvement I feel we must look at the question are not matters as intricate as this matters that have to be judged in the people's interest by highly qualified groups. People concerned with the people's interest but also thoroughly knowledgeable in the scientific matters concerning does that not pretty much have to be a federal responsibility and in the end isn't the city of Cambridge in the state of Michigan and everyplace that worries about this going to have simply to press the federal government to give them assurance that all points of view have been adequately heard and a reasonable decision has been made. In other words I think I can sympathize with the members of the city council in Cambridge I've had these pressures put upon them. But I think in the end they'll find themselves very hard pressed to take direct responsibility for a decision here. It's one thing to judge whether a building should or should not be constructed in the familiar in terms of whether it's safe or whether it's going to be a blight on the neighborhood. But whether it's going to be a source of danger to the people of Cambridge which is your concern. I think in the end Mr.

Mayor you're going to have to really rely on the scientific branches of the federal government to protect your interests there and they have a duty. This is a political issue and for those that are listening actually we want them to know that the. The wood political is not you know how many votes you can get out of it but that it's an issue that's before the people. And so when it comes before the people it's labeled political. What's the issue. The issue of whether or not the people in the city council have a right to control what happens in a city. And since these laboratories are supported with my tax dollars and the tax dollars of the people that live in Cambridge and the people that live in countries that nay should be subjected to to be in control now then we go a little step

further. A laboratory in the city of Cambridge is operating at the present time. I think Dover P3 work. How's it they're doing P4. I know they're doing P1 too. But if this issue had not been exposed in the press. I am sure that the laboratory research workers would have continued to do this work. The scientist at Harvard University already my t at that. They know they were doing and dealing with dangerous work because even your own scientists at Harvard and MIT he challenge you.

It was the lazy man that challenged you. It was the scientific world. Aha. That scientific all or part of their scientific world they challenge you and say you know maybe there could be. We don't know all. And when you begin to talk in the terms of we don't know all that man like myself becomes skeptical and I have to. Pro tactic help welfare and the safety of all the people in the city of Cambridge now you know the question becomes does the city of Cambridge have the power to shock any scientific work in the city of Cambridge. We have put together our own auto requesting that a three month moratorium be put into effect in a serious case with Nikhil.

But Dr. Mendelson and what you represent out of it and then why did he agree to abide by a three month moratorium. Maybe they didn't like it but they did. Never legit I think perhaps we should allow Dr. King to give some opening comments about what he thinks the issues are and then we can open this up to a general discussion. But I'm pleased to have me which is my major because through Echo so my own concerns I'm a professional microbiologist. I work with dangerous organisms every day so no one should go. And with respect to Dr. Cass's comments on the space program I actually was once a member of United States Anti Arctic expedition which was looking at the survival of bacteria under extreme environments just because of the space program. Now I think that the research is extremely dangerous. I think that tampering with hundreds of millions of years of evolution making combinations of organisms that most biologists believe never occurred in

nature is something that is not treading lightly. And furthermore I think that the organisms the nature of the pollution the kind of biological pollution has an irreversible quality. It's not like an oil spill that you can go out and white but it's not even like radioactivity that has a finite lifetime and eventually will decay away organisms grow and reproduce themselves. Now if the people who say there's nothing to worry about are wrong OK then we have a very major problem on our hands. So one I think it is dangerous to it's I think an aspect of is irreversible. Now I won't go into right now save for later technical arguments about why putting DNA from other organisms into a bacteria that we know infects all human beings all warm blooded animals the soil the sewerage the local rivers why I think that's dangerous. OK it's a very simple possibility of the spread of its ability to cause infection E. coli already cause you're in a tract infection by women cause diarrhea in infants it causes death at low frequency among

people who are already sick from something else. But people who are sick from something else deserve protection as well as people who are who are healthy and I don't think that we're talking about new diseases and I think people who compare this to infectious diseases make a very narrow comparison because these organisms are Nestle begin to become new infectious diseases. They're simply going to interfere with the kind of fitness and health of the organisms that they propagate in in in a way we can't predict. Now if we look back over the history of public issues over this kind of stuff. You know you remember when the cigarette industry told us there's nothing to worry about with cigarette smoking millions of people do it. They're not dropping dead they've been smoking cigarettes for 40 years. Then we learned that as a matter of fact that they were dropping dead in a very particular way. The slow death of lung cancer is best as industry told us Our people have been working with this Best us for 50 years look at it and they're working in the factories nothing to worry about. Then we learned that as a matter of fact yes they had been working in the factories and but their health had been

continually and very deeply damaged in the factories. But no one had been investigating them. Recently it's turned out that an operating room nurse nurses suffer a very high rate of spontaneous abortion miscarriage which apparently is due to the operating room gases the the anesthetics. Well for years and years people said oh there's nothing to worry about operating room nurses have been you know in operating rooms for 40 years and as far as intelligent because no one had looked to see if they were getting sick at a high level. Now to my knowledge there's never been an epidemiological study of for example technicians who work in virus laboratories as do they forget about new dangers that I'm talking about what about the old dangers. Lots of questions about. Whether the hazards that are described as small houses the preexisting one are small but secondly the question of making new ones. Now we've been told that there may be great benefits. Then maybe there may be and there may not be. All the ones I've heard are absolutely I question that forcing that put forward as a defense

by scientists have a vested interest in their own research. The moment it's it's identified as dangerous they have to come up with benefits otherwise it's clear it wouldn't do it would do it. But in the end it comes down to one thing. As may have alluded you said the people of the country pay for the research. I don't know how many you people out there in Cambridge know that most of the research that goes on MIT and Harvard myself Professor Davis professor Cass is paid for from the National Institute of Health and it comes out of our taxes. The risk in genetic engineering is going to is going to be borne by the whole community. And what's more ironic it's going to be done in the name of the community it's going to be claimed that we are asking for all these benefits. Now if we pay for it and we bear the risk and if the benefits are to accrue to us then it's up to us to decide whether we want to bear the risk. We made it so we don't want those benefits. We don't want to take the chance. Now right now there is not in the United States any democratic mechanism of the general public working people exercising input over the biomedical research community. The city council hearing was really you

know in the bicentennial was a historic first it was extending democracy not just of voting for senators but finding out what kind of risk your tax money we're going to put you to. I would like to see the city of Cambridge put a little pressure on Harvard MIT to do a little research that would benefit the health of the city of Cambridge. We don't have a cancer registry in the city of Cambridge we got more microbiologists per capita anywhere in the country and we don't even have a research program to find out what people in Cambridge get sick from. Well it seems that the local issue anyway is how safe is the DNA research project for the community of Cambridge the proposed project that's going to be going on at the Harvard Biological Laboratory. I read a local effect what you're saying but I don't think you've defined the issues that have been spoken to around this table right now how do you regulate issue one of the several issues that I have heard. Just listening to the conversation there's some disagreement about potential safety talking benefit I suggest we discuss that in some detail. It's not actually terribly

important. A second issue I've heard is the issue of whether a city council or any other community group has a right to. Expressed its own wishes or even to govern or control aspects of research endeavor within this in the same community. And the third issue I've heard has to do with perceptions that the health community may or may not have been sufficiently politically aware. Whether there's been a sufficient amount of research. I've heard all kinds of things that I don't understand that dragged in nurses working in operating rooms and various other things that represent the movement of progress as we learn more about everything and somehow this is taken as an example of where we have been deficient. What I'm trying to say is that where we have been deficient is because we have been ignorant and there is only one way we

dispel ignorance and that's by careful study and careful facts and we must always keep the word ignorance in the middle of this table because that's a very big factor of our conversation and it's just as ignorant in my judgment to misuse half baked data about nurses in operating rooms as is the misuse half baked data that recombination with bacteria. Ignorance is our problem. So let's get down to what we're really talking about. Now for example my personal view others may disagree is that the body politic has every right to know as much as it's possible to know everything about research that's going on in the community and has every right to express its judgments. On the other hand in order to express its judgments the first requirement of our political figures such as mayor Baluchi the first requirement in order for his judgment to be not demagoguery but informed responsible actions by a leader in the

community is to become fully aware as much as possible of what the issues are. Now one side not the other side but as many sides as possible. The purpose of this discussion as I see it is to bring in as many of these sides so the balance of judgment can occur. I don't argue with moratorium I don't like with the right of it. I do argue with the political thrust that says the big reason for this has to do with a lot of things are absolutely irrelevant to this question. I'd like to take up the question of ignorance. Let's ask why is the public not as well informed on this issue as they might be. Now some of us myself other social group called science the people we've been trying for some years to move this issue out to the public. We've tried to get forms on it. We've tried to write newspaper articles on it. We've tried to speak out on many occasions. In general the scientific community's been rather resistant to us going to the public generally and they've said this is not an issue to bring up with the public. They'll

only get upset. My feeling has been that if for example your right that this great ignorance as to the changes of gene manipulation research. And since the general public is at risk then they ought to know that there is that there is great ignorance about a potentially great risk because then we might not be willing to subject themselves to the risk taking of their hearts around. Nobody is questioning the right of people to be informed about matters that involve their interests their health or any of their other interests. Mr. King Dr. King's suggestion that the people have no mechanism whatsoever until this recent development to have their interest represented in this or any other area is to me a strange one because in fact we have elaborate mechanisms for the people to have their interests taken care of and represented the city council as an elected representative body to protect the interests of the people of the city of Cambridge in certain areas. The federal government is a set of Elected and Appointed Officials with similar obligations. The question isn't whether we are an amorphous map of Pete mass of

people with nobody protecting our interests. The question is who should be responsible for what. Now Mayor Baluchi I'd like to ask a direct question and build up to it. Hundred thousand people of Cambridge are taking various medicines all the time. How do you know I believe because there would be no drug stores. I didn't say everybody takes it the people on the whole are purchasing and taking a great many medicines. Some of those medicines have toxic effects. The city council does not take it upon itself to take personal responsibility for deciding what drugs will and will not be sold in drug stores in Cambridge. They allow they trust the Food and Drug Administration and other admin branches of the federal government to advise them on that already know personally a bit mystified what you do you personally believe that the city council will be able to judge the details of the degree of safety value and risk of the recombinant DNA better than the kind of body that the federal government could set up to pursue this matter.

You asked me that question yes I do I learn more in the last three weeks than the federal bureaucrat in Washington that made a study of this for the last two years. You want to debate the question what may let's call your scientists and I'm a lay man. I like to put my have a look at this Bernie as you know. OK I've been in the vocal opposition for two three years ago we wrote our first paper saying that this was going to be a threat. Now I have all the credentials. OK in myself John Beckwith even saying these are all microbiologists around Boston who've been concerned for years in the Washington operations where you have 15 research scientists all of interest in promoting the research writing the regulation of the research. None of the opposition was included. Right we were quite actively maybe by chance were excluded. However in the Cambridge City Council hearings first there was a presentation from the one side and then there was a presentation from the other side. There was an adversary proceeding and I would submit that any adversary proceeding is intrinsically fairer and more likely to get the truth out than

when one group of people is controlling the apparatus and excluding the opposition and the critics the people who are concerned and they have a right to be concerned. Why are they concerned. Well they're concerned first of all because they this thing surfaced in the newspapers then from the Phoenix that ran on the wall and from the gold ran into that Harold American from the Herald American who ran into the Christian Science and then of course when this came out scientists such as this fine man to my right came out and he expressed his opinion and then Dr. Wald a Nobel Prize. How does he feel about this file he said he's rehearsed what he says she should post that it should be contained not in Cambridge but a measure someplace where it wouldn't come into contact with people because it's too dangerous too dangerous he says too dangerous. And of course there was a Doctor Hubbard there I don't know Doctor how but I don't know Dr wall. They presented themselves and

they said you know you I have Stan you can have a meaning we want to come and so I got a call from this gentleman and he says I want to come. We got a call from Dr. Ro from MIT and Harvard and said I understand he would have a meeting would like to come. So at that time it shows the door was open to everybody. But you see. I hope. That they are not driving the city government up against the wall into a position where we have to fight back because. There are the government is very mighty especially when 100000 people are on it on their side. You see under the city charter of the city of Cambridge we have a law backed by the legislature backed by the state of Massachusetts that says that five members of the city council could be the very same five

that voted for the moratorium. Five members of the Cambridge City Council can declare an emergency if they feel that the people of Cambridge are in jeopardy. Whether it be a flood fire disaster riot or even infection leaking out of any of the laboratories in the city of Cambridge. We've been listening to Mayor Alfred Delucchi of Cambridge Dr. Jonathan King Professor of Biology at MIT and a member of the group science for the people. And also on this panel Dr. Bernard Davis of the Harvard School of Medicine and a specialist in bacterial genetics along with Dr. Edward Cass of the Harvard Medical School and a specialist in Clinical Infectious

Diseases. Tonight is the first part of a discussion recently here at WGBH about a proposed research facility at Harvard University which includes work on recumbent DNA. Join us for additional information tomorrow evening here on your notes and comments on the subject are certainly most welcome and can be addressed to WGBH radio Boston 0 2 1 3 4 about Africa. This is Eleanor stuff.