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1 documentation. This posture has served us well in the 
2 past, and it should require an exceptionally strong case 
3 to bring us to a different position. 
4 Only a scientific hermit could label the current 
5 condition one of consensus. We also seem slightly deficient 
6 in overwhelming documentation of hazard. 
7 I suppose it is the province of politics to 
8 resolve tensions in such a case. However, I see no reason 
9 to withdraw the benef it-of- the-doubt policy afforded our 
jo important freedoms in the past. 
U I don't believe the major issue revolves around 
12 the potential benefits versus the potential costs measured 
13 simply by comparing miracles and disasters. Nevertheless, 
14 I can't resist commenting on the miracles. It seems to me 
15 we underestimate them. Futurists seem singularly unable to 
16 lay out for us the panorama of the future rooted in the 
17 discoveries of the present. We consistently underestimate 
10 the future by predicting that it will be the sum of the 
19 projection of today's trends. 
20 It is the unexpected discoveries which seem to 
21 characterize the futures that we have already known. How 
22 can we project the trends of the presently undiscovered? 
23 While the grail of human insulin seems today a splendor 
24 indeed, I don't think that that is the major harvest to be 
25 anticipated from recombinant DNA inquiries. The harvest. 
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