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experiment can only be done under one of two conditions. One of these con- 
ditions is the type of physical containment used for the manufacture of bio- 
logical warfare weapons combined with a vector that has an a. priori likeli- 
hood of one chance in a hundred million of surviving outside the laboratory. 
It would be possible to lower the level of physical containment only if an 
organism were used as a vector that had been proven not to get out of the 
laboratory at one chance in a hundred million. And even then the level of 
physical containment would be very high. 
It seems to me that these proposals offer the public an enormous degree 
of protection, but at the same time make it possible, and I might say, espe- 
cially in the context of somebody who works in a university situation train- 
ing students, only barely possible to go forward. This leads me to a dif- 
ferent way of looking at the question of whether these guidelines are an 
appropriate response to the hazard. 
One could argue that the only appropriate response to this unknown 
potential hazard is to completely ban the experiments. After all, that 
would provide the highest degree of protection of all, so there must be an 
argument why these experiments should be done at all, and I think that argu- 
ment needs to be remembered in very forceful terms. 
There are two critical reasons why these experiments should be allowed 
to go forward with the appropriate protection. One reason is because of the 
scientific interest in the experiments, and the second reason is because of 
the medical potential in them. The ability to form recombinant DNA mole- 
cules opens up the opportunity to utilize the enormous resources developed 
in the study of bacteria to probe how higher cells function. The medical 
justification is twofold. There is a potential for the manufacture of bio- 
logicals, and there is a potential for understanding the complicated dis- 
eases that arise from the malfunction of cells. 
Such cellular diseases are the major unsolved medical problems of the 
developed world. Foremost among them is cancer, and I think it is 
important to remember one thing about cancer, because I have had an argument 
made to me that since cancer is an environmental problem one needn't worry 
about attacking it by sophisticated biology; one can attack it by getting 
rid of problems in the environment. However, the statement that 80 percent 
or more of human cancer is caused by environmental influences, while true, 
does not mean that 80 percent of the disease is caused by things in the air 
we breathe or the water we drink. It rather means that 80 percent of the 
disease is caused by various aspects of our lifestyles, including our diet, 
our smoking habits, our sexual habits * et cetera. Human beings are very 
conservative about their personal habits and do not easily change them. 
Even if we identify the causes of breast cancer, cervical cancer, prostate 
cancer, colon cancer, and bladder cancer, it is unlikely that we are going 
to be able to design a civilization that will be acceptable to the popula- 
tion and that will prevent the occurrence of these terrible diseases. We 
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