245 
MR. HUTT : In other words, you would allow people to do any type of 
DNA experimentation that might occur to them without any type of control? 
DR. WATSON: Yes. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: A final question or comment from Dr. Neel. 
DR. NEEL: What we have heard, one would gather that the sole motiva- 
tion in the Asilomar group and other groups was one of fear that they might 
set off an epidemic. Now, I had interpreted one of the motivations as based 
on a sense of humi 1 i ty--and I might say, a humility which I, who work with 
the higher eukaryote, haven't always seen in molecular geneticists in recent 
years — a humility that we now have the ability to create new life forms and 
we had better stop and think about this just a little bit before we went 
ahead full tilt. I gather that was not one of the major considerations? 
DR. WATSON: I think the thought was — to think? I don't think anyone 
thought at all at that meeting. I think they just had to put a series of 
— they felt obliged to quantitate something, and scientists have to count. 
If you can't count something generally, it isn't science. Now, there are 
exceptions to that. But the whole idea that we could quantitate the risks 
wasn't there, and that left the whole thing open to the thing that it was 
self-serving, because you really couldn't prove one thing was safer than the 
other. One got one's self into the position of having to prove everything 
was safe instead of the other way around of saying look, we have some evidence 
that something is dangerous. It was a completely silly affair to believe 
that you use numbers — PI, P2, P3, EK1, EK2 — when there was no factual, quanti- 
tative basis to say that toad DNA or any other DNA was more dangerous. In 
fact, what they came out against was that human DNA was unbelievably danger- 
ous. Now, one doesn't have to either talk about legal or illegal acts 
to know that we are exposed to a lot of human DNA, and yet it was put in P4, 
only to be done at Fort Detrick, as if all sex would have to occur there. I 
mean, it was the most silly thing. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. Neel, was that— 
DR. NEEL: Well, I think we are getting over into some discretion for 
this afternoon, but I would say only this, that the recombinant DNA that we 
have been considering thus far is only part of the total picture of recombi- 
nant DNA, and perhaps this afternoon we can talk about some other aspects of 
the problem, which I do think call for a measure of humility. 
DR. WATSON: I think also there should be some humility on the part of 
the scientists, to think of the complexity of what happens in nature. And 
the interchange, you know, Weeney's [?] little paper in Bacteriological 
Reviews , which I think was very nice in — the sort of evolutionary insight 
as to--sort of illegal sexual mechanisms toward evolution, is one way you 
could put it. 
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