265 
say, of spreading an uncontrollable epidemic all over the place, well, these 
fears were exaggerated. From this point of view, the statements of Dr. Davis, 
Dr. Szybalski, or Dr. Watson, all the statements, make a lot of sense. 
On the other hand, I note, again as an outsider to this field, it is very 
easy to be carried away and to take an overly narrow, perhaps even provincial 
or emotional point of view as to what the dangers or lack of dangers are with 
new technologies, say the recombinant DNA technology here. It has happened 
again and again that when scientific discoveries were applied on an industrial 
and commercial scale, many unforeseen problems resulted, perhaps as a result 
of this change from science to technology. There are numerous examples, and I 
won't go into that, release of chemicals, radiation damage, and so on and so 
forth . 
What seems peculiar about recombinant DNA is because of this capability 
of potential cell replication one can conceive of serious problems even before 
these technologies are exploited on a large, commercial scale. 
So the problem is, of course, that we cannot pin down these potential 
problems in this particular case. By the very nature these unforeseen 
problems are unknown. So I am no longer talking about E. coli epidemics 
in man specifically, but more about these perhaps subtle perturbations to the 
ecosystem, which might have nasty long-term consequences. I guess Professor 
Sinsheimer has articulated some of these possibilities, at least. Professor 
King of MIT yesterday also mentioned some others. This is where I find the 
weak point in my arguments. I am not sufficiently well informed to‘ make a 
judgment as to whether there is any theoretical evidence that these dangers 
exist. This was brought up by Dr. Campbell. So here I think I simply lack 
information. This is. a matter of scientific judgment, perhaps. I just don't 
know whether there is or there is not a consensus among, say, the biological 
or biomedical community as to whether these potential dangers are realistic or 
not* 
So what does all this imply? What does this have to do in connection 
with these revised Guidelines? How can one deal with unknown factors? Well, 
about the only thing that one can do is to proceed with caution, try to be 
alert to unforeseen consequences. With this perspective I feel there is not 
enough information to place so many experiments in so many different cate- 
gories. You can only do that strictly from the point of view of, say, 
epidemics in man through conversion of an E. coli K-12 into a pathogen. But 
then, this particular hazard seems to have been overstated, to have been 
exaggerated . 
So what I am proposing is not to do away entirely with this structure of 
where to place such experiments, but perhaps to reexamine the two extremes. 
There seems to be little justification not to go ahead with experiments such 
as the one that Drs. Rowe and Martin propose to do — an experiment which is 
apparently being carried out in England anyhow and which might give informa- 
tion on the risk assessment, which is very much needed. So, the Guidelines 
[ 469 ] 
