244 
DR. 
hys ter ia 
STURGIS: For better or for worse, you were responsible 
of the public, the group that first alerted them. 
for the 
DR. WATSON: I was a jackass. 
DR. STURGIS: Well, it doesn't make any difference. 
DR. WATSON: Okay. 
DR. STURGIS: The question now is, Has sufficient time gone by and has 
adequate experimentation been done to reassure these anxieties, whether they 
are unfounded or well-founded? Wasn't it wiser to go ahead and reduce the 
stringencies of the original Guidelines, and in an orderly way, while we are 
accumulating data, allow scientists to proceed? 
DR. WATSON: I think you should just relax them instantly and get on to 
something more interesting. We are doing it in a small step now, and it has 
been relaxed considerably more in Europe, so there will be a temptation to go 
to Europe. So we are so diverted by petty issues, what I have heard this 
morning, that you should really ask yourselves first principles. Asilomar 
never really asked itself for first pinciples, and by the time they got there, 
they already had a committee drawing up guidelines. They were comparing 
themselves to Fermi and all these great people, and it was nonsense. Total 
nonsense . 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Mr. Hutt. 
MR. HUTT: I think that trying to ask people today whether they would 
sign the original moratorium letter would produce nothing more than hyper- 
bole and political answers at this time. I think that would be uniquely 
unhelpful to any of us in this room. But there is one question that I would 
like to pose to you. That is, when you suggest that we abandon the Guide- 
lines, are you suggesting that the current list of prohibited experiments now 
be permitted in whatever form any individual scientist might wish to pursue 
them, or are you merely suggesting that those that are subject to the various 
types of restrictions but are permitted under some form of restriction, that 
those could go forward with either lesser or no significant restrictions? 
DR. WATSON: I personally — The dangers that I can see are so slight 
compared to what we do already, that I would totally — Now, you'll say that 
will let the Agency go ahead and make that super bug, and buy another part of 
Katanga or something like that and have people doing it. Well, what we do 
today isn't going to have the slightest effect on what those guys do. Most 
people really aren't out to do their neighbors in, and through massive 
antibiotic use and things, we can develop other things. I don't really think 
it was worth the enormous bureaucracy. 
MR. HUTT: I am not sure I have heard the answer to my question. 
DR. WATSON: Yes, I would give them up completely. 
[ 448 ] 
