239 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Are there any other comments or questions for Dr. 
Watson? 
Dr. Molina. 
DR. MOLINA: I just have a comment. This attitude of innocence until 
proven guilty, that applies to people, but not necessarily, say, to chemi- 
cals or perhaps recombinant DNA. At least with chemicals you can clearly 
think of some chemicals that you might mass produce that would certainly be 
very harmful. So you don't do that even if you do not have clear evidence 
that they would do harm, and that is what we are concerned about here, 
potential harm, even if it is not necessarily overwhelming. So there are 
two sides to the issue. 
DR. WATSON: But, you 
all of these people, with 
a black kid to school, or 
something. This is not a 
know, it is a question of how big 
millions of dollars which have been 
teaching a Mexican-American how to 
sort of--we do not have infinite we 
is the risk to 
spent on sending 
speak English or 
alth to squander. 
DR. MOLINA: 
It is a matter of judgment. 
MS. KING: I just wanted to say to Dr. Watson as a member of the public, 
that even though he thinks his actions some years ago were misguided, that 
there are some of us who believe that what they did was terribly important. 
And God forbid — sorry, Professor Gustafson — what would have happened if the 
public had learned about recombinant DNA if scientists did not originally 
tell us. You would have faced, I fear, a far more drastic public reaction 
than you have already had. 
DR. WATSON: 
to worry about. 
And as a society 
damn this. 
I don't think so, because there was nothing for the public 
There are many things, facts, which we should worry about, 
we should worry about facts, and there are no facts to 
DR. GINSBERG: I would like to support Dr. Watson in that. We have in 
every city in the land hospitals with bacteriological and biological diag- 
nostic laboratories. In those hospitals, day in and day out, are being 
handled much more dangerous organisms than any recombinant DNA, and nobody 
has worried about it all these years. 
DR. WATSON: I mean, this is supposedly a great dialogue between science 
and the public, but I couldn't think of a worse thing, because there is 
nothing to bring the public into yet. If you could bring them into the fact 
that we are going to kill ten people or something like that, then you could 
have a dialogue, but how could you have a dialogue on the probability of a 
witch? 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. Sinsheimer, and then Dr. Campbell from the RAC. 
[ 443 ] 
