Science
Tailored genes
Bernard Dixon
Muted reportage in the Guardian and the Times, a few seconds on television news, just one sensational headline with the buzz word 'super-bug' — media reaction to last week's publication of a report by Lord Ashby's working party on 'genetic engineering' has been remarkably restrained. Amazingly so. Even a couple of years ago, a study triggered by high-level calls for a world-wide ban on scientific experimentation in the highly sensitive field of hereditary manipulation would have received the full treatment, banner headlines, purple prose and all. Not so in the
uneasy UK of 1975, preoccupied with pecuniary gloom. We have problems aplenty. We don't want to have to worry about science too.
The purple prose is no loss, but in every other respect the low-key reception to Lord Ashby's report is regrettable. The subject tackled by his working party is of unprecedented historic importance. The report is unique of its sort in being written in accessible, non-specialist prose — advisedly so, in view of the great social significance of the work reviewed. And the conclusions are such a tantalising blend of reassurance and disquiet as to be a natural stimulus to public debate.
The gist of the problem stems from recently developed genetic techniques to which, last autumn, biologists themselves drew attention as possible sources of public danger. Over the past couple of years methods have emerged for linking together genetic material from disparate sources. Animal genes can be introduced into bacteria. Genetic factors conferring resistance to antibiotics, or the capacity to produce poisons, can be incorporated into bacterial cells. Genes from viruses may also be linked to the hereditary material in bacteria. These last two phenomena have happened before, in nature, but the new possibilities of tailor-making genetic combina
tions poses totally novel problems and potentialities. Geneticists can now create associations of genes that have never existed before. Unlike the countless genetic mixtures thrown up during the course of evolution, they are artificial products whose formation has not been subject to natural constraints.
In theory, such man-made -organisms are potentially invaluable. One development talked of among practitioners of genetic engineering is the creation of crop plants which can 'fix' nitrogen from the air. At present, only leguminous plants such as clover can do so. The prospect of giving wheat, oats, or barley the capacity to capture atmospheric nitrogen, and thus render them independent of chemical nitrate fertilisers, is highly attractive — no more so than in the crisis world of the mid-1970's. Another potentiality is the incorporation of animal genes into bacteria so that they could be used as miniature factories to manufacture hormones such as insulin.
But there are real dangers too. Above all, there is the risk that micro-organisms, produced in the laboratory by these new techniques, might 'escape' and cause unpredictable hazards to man, other animals, and even plants. It was in recognition of such threats that a committee of the US Na tional Science Foundation, chaired by Professor Paul Berg, last year called for a temporary moratorium on certain type of experiments in this field, until the dangers had been fully assessed.
There is much sound sense in the report of Lord Ashby's panel. The recommendations, which would go far in minimising potential dangers, include the creation of safety officers in laboratories doing work of th/'s sort, and several measures to increase the safeguards surrounding the research. Above all, research workers should adopt the safety techniques used routinely in medical laboratories dealing with pathogenic microbes. Rigorous measures along these lines are long overdue, and will do much to improve security.
What is extraordinary about the Ashby report, however, is that, while confirming the potential hazards, and suggesting methods which might be developed for abolishing totally the risk from the main category of experimentation, it does not support the idea of even a temporary hiatus in research while such safeguards are developed. The fact that an international meeting is to be held next month in the United States to consider the whole question makes this position even more regrettable.
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