Those Interested in Recombinant DNA 
June 4, 1976 
Page Two 
which depends on prompt, free, and open communication will be 
compromised. While the academic world is not without 
experience in the use of patents, it is characteristically 
without good evidence of the effects of their use. To state 
the matter in the negative, though, I have seen no evidence 
that the fairly common expectation of patentable inventions 
that characterizes some areas of engineering or chemistry 
has inhibited the progress of science in those areas or has 
damaged openness and collegiality . 
It could, of course, happen, and it is impossible to prove 
that it will not happen in the biomedical sciences. It is 
fair to observe, however, that other developments in recent 
years have posed what night have been thought in prospect 
to be serious threats to the openness of science — more 
serious in fact than the patent system. For example, the 
adoption of research funding based almost exclusively on 
competitive applications to government agencies might have 
led to the kind of secrecy that characterizes competition 
for government contracts in business in industry. That it 
has not is encouraging evidence of the strength of the 
values that prevail in science and in academic institutions, 
and it suggests that it is those values, rather than the 
addition or subtraction of particular incentives, that will 
determine the way science is conducted in the future 
II Commercial Development and Basic Research 
The report of the University of Michigan committee that 
recommended that recombinant DNA research be permitted 
under appropriate controls started by rejecting the notion 
"that any and all such research should be permitted because 
freedom of inquiry is an absolute freedom that must never 
be abridged." Indeed, few people today would argue in 
support of so extreme a statement of scientific freedom. 
Perhaps the chief limiting factor, the one that is most 
likely to generate a demand for controls, is the element 
of risk. Some hazards are so great and so imminent as to 
render the research that produces them unacceptable — 
atmospheric nuclear explosions are such a case. In other 
instances judgments must be made that balance the magnitude 
and likeliness of risk against the size and probability cf 
benefit. Nowhere in recent years has that balancing been 
argued so publicly among scientists as in the debate over 
the future of recombinant DNA research. To an outsider, 
reading the literature of that debate, one fact stands out: 
there would be no debate were it not for the enormous pro- 
spective benefits that are predicted to accrue from continu- 
ation of the research. Were it not for those benefits it 
is highly unlikely that funding agencies would find it 
politically possible to accept the degree of risk that is 
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