Lock the labs in Cambridge? 
Wash. Star Like ships passing unseen in the night, two of The Star's 
7 / 12/76 editorial writers commented independently on the same topic, 
and sailed tq a differing wind. 
MAYBE 
There is a thoroughly modem collision occur- 
ring in the hamlet of Cambridge in Massa- 
chusetts. It is one of those disagreements in 
which either side can be viewed with bemuse- 
ment or contempt or, more sensibly, sympathy. 
The modernity in the case of Cambridge City 
Council vs. Deoxyribonucleic Acid Recombinant 
lies in the ambivalence with which many per- 
sons regard the exuberance of scientific 
achievement. 
Science, of course, in a sophisticated defini- 
tion, is largely a child of the 19th and 20th cen- 
turies. and skepticism has been its sibling. The 
more we learn — or think we learn — about our- 
selves and the cogs and rotors of the universe, 
the more straitened becomes the tension be- 
tween .that accrual of knowledge and the 
manner of its application. Which at least in part 
is at issue in Cambridge. The city council the 
other day. voted 5-3 to institute a three-month 
moratorium on plans for advanced genetic re- ' 
search at Harvard and the Massachusetts Insti- 
tute of Technology, both of which do business ' 
within the municipality of Cambridge. ' 
The experiments involve combining deoxyri- 
bonucleic acid — .DNA, which can be viewed as 
an organism's genetic Western Union — with 
two types of organisms, usually a warm-blood- 
ed animal and a special bacterial strain. From 
this recombinant process can come a new 
organism: The possibility exists that the new- 
comer may be 'utterly unknown and its proper- 
ties could be unpredictable. 
Opponents of .the experiments fear that the 
wiggy fellows in the labs may create nasty exi- 
NO 
Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci of Cambridge, 
Mass., has a problem. He seems to think that he 
is running an inquisition rather than a city 
council. At least, the city council of that city, 
over which he presides, has assumed in- 
quisitorial powers over the scientific labs of 
Cambridge. 
They did so, it seems, because Harvard 
University is preparing to conduct so-called 
"recombinant" experimentation with the basic 
genetic material deoxyribonucleic acid, or 
DNA, the messenger of heredity. 
It is proposed, as we understand it, to take 
apart the DNA of different organisms and 
“recombine" it, creating a new organic strain. 
Where this experimentation might lead 
essentially unknowable — as is often the case 
with basic research. Maybe somewhere inter- 
esting. Maybe nowhere at all. 
The prospect of this genetic engineering in 
Cambridge has aroused opposition, even among 
scientists. This is nothing new, of course. When 
Louis Pasteur first undertook to develop rabies 
inoculation, the paradox of it all spread terror 
not only in the populace but among some con- 
ventional medical practitioners 'who had mas- 
tered the "knowledge”of the time. 
We profess no foresight in the matter. But it 
would seem that too many copies of Michael 
Crichton’s fantasy novel. The Andromeda 
Strain, have circulated in Cambridge, Mass. 
Reprinted by 
gencies with their scientific tinkering, from 
.which new diseases could bloom for which we 
have no antidotes. Proponents argue that the 
experiments may provide basic scientific 
understanding of cell reproduction that could, 
among other things, aid in the search for cancer 
cures. There is no unanimity among the aca- 
demic community in favor of the research — 
supporting the city council, for example, is 
Nobel laureate George Wald. 
There is a further element: The action by the 
Cambridge officialdom is worrying the scientif- 
ic brotherhood — that it may set a precedent of 
community control over such specialized re- 
search. Ticklish issue there. What it may mean 
is that scientists are going to have to learn to 
talk to the rest of us. 
We said this was a thoroughly modem head- 
butting, but the antecedents of ambivalence are 
inherent in the very bones of science. Two gen- 
tlemen from the 19th Century were eloquent 
from different, if not necessarily opposing, per- 
spectives. Charles Lamb, in a letter to a friend, 
wrote: "Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to 
civilize, and then bum the world? There is a 
march of science; but who shall beat the drums 
of its retreat?" Thomas Huxley in mid-century 
expressed the sense of inevitability of man’s 
curiosity: "The generalizations of science sweep 
on in ever-widening circles, and more aspiring 
flights, through a limitless creation.” 
The Cambridge affair is, in this fundamental 
sense, intractable: But terms must be found by 
which to address it. It can be argued that the 
debate is already decades late. 
There are visions of some devastating new 
organism escaping from the recombinant test 
tubes and assailing the good people of the city. 
And who, after all, is to say the possibility nay? 
No one is ever sure where basic experimenta- 
tion in any field will lead. But Cambridge has 
made an impermissible response; it has voted 
to set up a system of political control. "Cam- 
bridge has six square miles, and we're boss 
here," commented Mayor Vellucci. 
This is obscurantism in the pure state, 
whatever form it takes; and in Cambridge it 
has taken the form of a "moratorium" ordi- 
nance suspending all recombinant DNA re- 
search while a committee writes a “city policy" 
for future control of the experimentation. 
Much has been said and written, in recent 
years, about the ethical responsibiity of re- 
search scientists, especially those who labor at 
the frontiers of nuclear physics and genetics. 
There is, indeed, an ethical responsibility to 
see that the applications and uses of scientific 
discovery are benign. But political control of the 
Cambridge variety is not the answer. If there 
are to be ethical norms for research, those who 
do the research are themselves best qualified to 
set them. Mayor Vellucci and his councilmen 
should confine themselves to holding the dog- 
catcher to his duties and leave the science labs 
alone. 
permission of The Washington Star . 
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