Meeting; of the Director's Advisory Committee 
NIH 
Dec. 15-16, 1977 
Presentation by David T. Suzuki 
"Dr. Faustus, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, 
Dr. Jek/ll, Dr. Cyclops, Dr. Caligari, Dr. Strange- 
love. The scientist who does not face up tc the 
warning in this persistent folklore of mad doctors 
is himself the worst enemy of science. In these 
images of our popular culture resides a legitimate 
public fear of the scientist's stripped down, de- 
personalized conception of knowledge — a fear that 
our scientists, well-intentioned and decent men and 
women all, will go on being titans who create monsters." 
Theodore Rossak. 
For the past twenty years, science has been the dominant 
element of m}? - iife 7 rewarding me with the surprise and joy 
of discovery beyond my wildest dreams. I care passionately 
about science as the highest form of intellectual activity in 
our culture. And it's in a longterm social context of science 
that I see the importance of the recombinant DNA issue. What 
has excited me about the public interest in recombinant DNA 
was the hope that scientists would have forced upon them an 
understanding of the extent of their social responsibility 
while the public in turn would have to become educated about 
the nature of the scientific enterprise. Neither, I'm afraid, 
has actually happened. 
I have been a certified Drosophila geneticist for sixteen 
years and for the past seven, people in my laboratory have 
been involved in finding the chromosome locations of TRNA 
genes. Several laboratories using plasmids with Drosophila 
DNA will render our work obsolete within a year. So you can 
imagine the pressure within my group to "get in on the action" 
ourselves. Indeed, my colleague, Gordon Tener of the Bio- 
chemistry Dept, has received a special grant to build contain- 
ment facilities in accordance to the guidelines of the Medical 
Research Council of Canada. 
[Appendix A — 194] 
