Here in Australia, on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), the government owned national media outlet, they are broadcasting a documentary series called "DNA". It is a series about the discovery of DNA and how it is being used.
I caught the broadcast last night of an episode named "DNA: Playing God". It focused on the biotech revolution started by Dr. Herbert Boyer of UC San Francisco who figured out how to make emzynes splice strands of DNA. In 1973 he joined forces with Dr. Stanley Cohen and inserted those snipped strands into the genes of bacteria. Specificity, they were able to take a gene sequence from a frog and insert it into the DNA of a E. Coli bacteria. Then they were able to get the modified E. Coli bacteria to reproduce itself making billions of copies of the artificially modified bacteria.
Their discovery lead to an explosion in recumbent DNA field, with scientists all over trying experiments with this technique to transfer genes across species. There were no controls, and no checks, and no balances. It was the wild west of research.
Some of their actions were downright reckless. For example, one scientist modified a E. Coli bacteria, grew it, and used himself as a test subject about it's safety. He would drink the bacteria, and then examine his stool samples. He concluded that bacteria can no survive the digestive system, and therefore it was safe.
The Asilomar Conference: In 1973 the safety of such experiments was discussed in a conference. The conference leaders decided to request the National Academy of Sciences to appoint a study committee to examine such recombinant DNA experiments. Paul Berg, a Stanford University biochemist, was appointed as the chair of the committee and he asked for a temporary moratorium on certain types of research and called for an international conference to discuss potential problems. In February 1975 such a conference, now known as the Asilomar Conference, was held in Asilomar, California. Guidelines with respect to physical and biological containment were drawn at that conference to effectively self-police the scientist community doing such research. It was a landmark event in the history of recombinant DNA. Subsequently, the National Institutes of Health, the funding agency for life science research in the US and elsewhere, developed its own guidelines modeled on those of Asilomar Conference. These guidelines, tempered by further research in progress, have remained the touchstone for researchers in the genetic engineering field.
The conference brought awareness of the risks to the scientists doing this leading edge work. One thing that was brought to light at the conference was the lack of awareness of safety procedures, risk minimization, and oversight of the scientists. These scientist simply didn't know what they didn't know. At the conference where scientist who work with deadly agents in chemical and germ warfare. These people were very aware of the risks of infection, containment, and how to mitigate them.
The gene splicers where doing these things in open labs with no controls, no containment equipment, and no clue as to what might happen. It was research just for the sake of research. They did not have the benefit of experience of dealing with truly dangerous and deadly toxins. Some of the guidelines were simple and blindingly obvious. For example, a rule you should not allow food and drink into the lab. It was not uncommon for people to handle genetically modifed material in their right hand while munching on a sandwich with their left. Not smart, but they were not even thinking of such precautions.
Going back to the scientist who drank his own creation to prove it was safe. I was flabbergasted by his attitude. There are many ways for infectious agents to get into the body. The most obvious is through cuts in the skin, and via sexual transmission. The AIDS virus can't be caught by eating it. But it can be caught by fluid transfer with blood exchange or sexual exchange.
I was shocked at how reckless it all seemed. It is like they learned nothing from the chemical disasters of the last 100 years. Wonder chemicals that seems like perfect solutions when they came out turned out to have terrible and long lasting side effects. Birth defects, cancer, resistant virus strains, auto-immune diseases.
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