But there was tremendous pressure in my lab to begin working with the new technologies of DNA manipulation, because the techniques were so powerful that they had become molecular equivalents of a microscope, an indispensable tool for virtually every kind of genetic study. However, if my lab began to exploit these new technologies, I would have a strong vested interest in defending their continued use and ultimately application. Wouldn't this make me just like a scientist working for the tobacco industry, someone with a perspective and motivation that bias the way he or she carries out tests, interprets results, and draws conclusions? I had achieved far more in science than I ever dreamed. I hadn't set out to win honors or prizes or make a fortune; I only ever wanted the acknowledgment of my scientific cleverness by my peers.
As a result of the grotesque misapplication of a genetic rationale during the early part of the twentieth century in the eugenics movement, and in the Japanese Canadian evacuation, and then in the Holocaust, I knew a debate about genetic engineering had to be engaged and I wanted to participate in it with credibility. So I began to write a series of disclaimers, stating my intent not to become involved in such research, even though it was perhaps one of the most exciting moments in the history of genetics. That made it all the more imperative that some people with a background in genetics be able to enter the discussion without a stake in the technology.
Nevertheless, I continue to take vicarious delight in the enormous technical dexterity of today's molecular geneticist and revel in seeing answers to biological questions I never thought would be resolved in my lifetime. I watched my daughter carrying out experiments in undergraduate labs that were unthinkable when I graduated with a PhD. It is no wonder geneticists are exhilarated — indeed, intoxicated with excitement. But the rush to exploit this new area as biotechnology has me deeply disturbed.
I am equally distressed at the rush of my peers and colleagues in genetics to tout the potential benefits of this powerful technology with virtually no consideration of the hazards. Like scientists employed by the tobacco, fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and forest industries, geneticists who set up companies, serve on boards, receive grants, or carry out experiments using the new techniques have a commitment to the technology that biases their pronouncements. As issues of cloning, stem cells, and release of genetically engineered organisms in the wild continue to crop up, there is a dearth of scientists trained in genetics who don't have a stake in the technology. Those few of us who are out there are often dismissed as has-beens who don't know what's going on. In their exuberance about the astonishing advances being made, scientists have expunged the history of their field and speak only of the enormous potential benefits of their work while dismissing the equally plausible hazards.
I have long agonized over the misapplication of genetics in the past, from the ludicrous claims of eugenics to prohibitions on interracial marriage, restrictions on immigration of ethnic groups, claims of racial inferiority, the supposed racial affinity of Japanese Canadians, and the Holocaust. Because of that, I wrote a series of columns that led to my eventual withdrawal from research to maintain my credibility in the discussions about the implications. In Science Forum in 1977, I wrote:
For young scientists who are under enormous pressure to publish to secure a faculty position, tenure or promotion, and for established scientists with “Nobelitis”, the siren's call of recombinant DNA is irresistible. . In my own laboratory, there is now considerable pressure to clone Drosophila DNA sequences in E. coli. . My students and postdocs take experiments and techniques for granted that were undreamed of five or ten years ago. We feel that we're on the verge of really understanding the arrangement, structure and regulation of genes in chromosomes. In this climate of enthusiasm and excitement, scientists are finding the debate over regulation and longterm implications of recombinant DNA a frustrating roadblock to getting on with the research.
I concluded that I wanted to participate in the debate about the implications of genetic work and that if I did, I could not also be involved in research using the revolutionary techniques. I continued:
Can the important questions be addressed objectively when one has such high stakes in continuing the work? I doubt it. Therefore I feel compelled to take the position that. . no such experiments [on recombinant DNA] will be done in my lab; reports of such experiments will not acknowledge support by money from my grants; and I will not knowingly be listed as an author of a paper involving recombinant DNA.
As a geneticist, I believe there will be monumental discoveries and applications to come. But I also know that it is far too early and that the driving force behind the explosion in biotechnology is money. I graduated as a fully licensed geneticist in 1961 and was arrogant, ambitious, and filled with a desire to make my name. We knew about DNA, and the genetic code was just breaking; it was a delirious moment in science and we were hot. But today when I tell students about the hottest molecular ideas in 1961, they laugh in disbelief because forty years later, those ideas seem ridiculously far from the mark.
Those same students seem shocked when I suggest that when they are professors twenty years from now, today's hottest ideas will seem just as far off the mark. The nature of any cutting-edge science is that most of our current ideas are wrong. That's not a denigration of science; it is the way science progresses. In a new area, we make a number of observations that we try to “make sense of” by setting up a hypothesis. The value of the hypothesis is not only that it provides a way of thinking about the observations but also that it allows one to make a critical test by experiments. When the experiments are complete and the data in, chances are we will throw out the hypothesis or radically modify it, then do another test. That's how science progresses in any revolutionary area, which is what biotechnology is. It becomes downright dangerous, then, if we rush to apply every incremental insight or technique within a theoretical framework that is probably wrong.
Geneticists involved in biotechnology make breathtakingly simple mistakes and assumptions. With the power to isolate, sequence, synthesize, and manipulate pieces of DNA, it is easy to conceive of all kinds of novel creations — bacteria that will spread through our bodies to scavenge mercury or other pollutants and then extrude them from a pimple, plants that photosynthesize under much lower light intensities or at twice the rate, plant crops that can live on highly salinated soil or fertilize themselves from air, and so on. Even though these are just pie-in-the-sky speculation, companies are often set up on such ideas. But if such notions are considered real possibilities, transfer of sterility genes to wild plants, genetically engineered fish that destroy ecosystems, and new deadly diseases are every bit as plausible. We just don't know.
Biotechnologists generally deal with a characteristic they want to transfer from one organism to another — for example, a product that behaves as an antifreeze in flounders that enables the fish to live at temperatures below freezing. The DNA specifying the antifreeze substance is isolated and then transferred, say to a strawberry plant, on the assumption that in that totally new environment, the DNA will function just as it did in the fish. But natural selection acts on the sum total of the expression of all of the genes in the cascade of reactions that occurs from fertilization to development of the whole organism. The entire genome is an entity selected to function in the proper sequence. When a flounder gene is inserted into a strawberry plant, the fish DNA finds itself in a completely alien context, and the scientist has no idea whether or how that gene will express itself in the new surroundings. It is like pulling rock star Bono out of his group u2, sticking him into the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and asking him to make music in that setting. Noise might emerge, but we can't predict what it will sound like.