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cloned and put into bacteria by the California group. I was, perhaps for 
this reason, asked by the Asilomar conference to assemble a group, and 
Dave Hogness was one member, to assess the hazards of putting animal and 
plant genes into bacteria. 
Now, it seems to me that the one thing which was never discussed in 
any great detail, and I am very delighted to see the members of the 
advisory committee discuss it, was the nature of the hazard itself. There 
has been very little discussion of how serious the hazard is. Can we really 
assess this hazard? 
The more I talked to my own colleagues, the more it seemed that the 
hazard was remote. It became more and more remote the more we talked. 
How can you assess a potential hazard? I personally do not believe it is 
a risk-versus-benef it operation. 
In basic biological research it strikes me that the risks must be 
minimized. We cannot by all means even predict really the benefits. I 
think we can quote examples of that many times over. 
But there really is a way, it seems to me, that you can kind of assess 
the hazards of this kind of research. You can compare it with the original 
source of the DNA. Now, this is a kind of exercise that I have subjected 
a number of virologists to, and I understand there are virologists, perhaps, 
on this committee, and Dr. Melnick, you might want to consider this little 
exercise. 
Suppose you had an animal virus like SV40, one which is used under P2- 
and P3-type containment in most laboratories, just physical containment 
alone — 2 guaranteed infectious particle. Members who work in the labora- 
tories get their serum converted to SV40 positive. They weren't before. 
So it is infectious. 
Now, supposing you had an important experiment in which you wanted to 
work with this viral DNA. Which would be safer? To grow large amounts of 
tissue culture material and purify large amounts of virus from this tissue 
culture material, guaranteed infectious particles, or to clone this genome 
the way you have heard it described, and grow up a liter of bacteria and 
get about the same amount of DNA from this liter of bacteria. 
Now, how do the two hazards match up? One, we have got the guaranteed 
infectious SV40 particle. Two, we have recombinant DNA with that virus in 
it. Now, what do you have to do to be poisoned by this recombinant DNA? I 
might add that as we all know from the guidelines you cannot do the second 
experiment now. There is a moratorium against it. You can't even use it 
under the same containment that you can work with SV40. It is illegal. 
You can't do it. 
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