97 
DR. CALLAHAN: Of knowledge, right. 
DR. HOGNESS: Yes, well, you think the more you know the more you can 
cure, and that is an enormous benefit. It is also a benefit to the spirit, 
or to my spirit. 
(Laughter. ) 
I think the other point that I would make in regard to our initial 
worry about these things and the possibility of epidemic, because that is 
what you are talking about — a catastrophe. If you are talking about some 
people getting sick, that is very bad, but if it is a few people, you can 
compare that with freeway accidents and lots of other things, but if it is 
a catastrophe, then we are talking about epidemics. 
Now, the only facts we have on this argue against it, because when 
you take all the genomes from the yeast and put it into independently 
cloned lambda vector particles, we have thousands of them, but independent 
ones, so you are representing the whole yeast genome, the whole eukaryotic 
genome. You put them all into a pot, into a flask, and then put in one 
original natural lambda vector at the same level that each one of these is, 
so you have got 20,000 there and you add this one lambda, then they would 
successively infect bacteria. Then look after two generations. The only 
thing that is left is the original parent. 
So in that sense and in that test they fared very, very poorly. That 
is, they were lost in this natural environment. That kind of thing makes 
us less worried abot the epidemic, but not totally. Of course, you can 
always argue that there is some niche that some one of these might have 
taken over. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. Singer? 
DR. SINGER: Just to answer the question that Dr. Callahan raised, I 
would like to say that in a sense the guidelines have recognized that 
exactly the quandary that you raised, and have responded to it by saying 
that in those instances where the possible hazardous events would be of 
such an enormous magnitude, we therefore conclude for those experiments 
that they ought not be done; whereas those experiments for which there 
are specific recommendations — that therefore come under a class of things 
which can be done — are other than those which give rise to fears of mas- 
sive disasters, or even modest disasters. So perhaps in a way responds to 
that. 
DR. FREDRICKSON: Dr. Kelly? 
DR. KELLY: I know so little about this that I ought to keep my mouth 
shut, but I thought that Dr. Petersdorf sort of sharpened an issue for us. 
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