137 
However, what is the way in which you would be poisoned? First you 
would have to drink down a large amount of this recombinant DNA, this 
bacteria containing recombinant DNA. This bacteria would presumably have 
to colonize or transform or transfer its infectious plasmid containing 
the thing to other bacteria. It would have, to a certain extent, to 
colonize. 
Now we have heard all about lO^ this and so forth, but that is where 
the discussion in hazards has stopped. But that is not the end of the 
biological containment which exists in humans, because having colonized 
the gut, the bacteria has to break down and liberate these poisonous 
plasmids. This naked DNA material must withstand the hostile environment 
of the gut. This naked DNA isn't even finished yet. It still has to go 
inside of the gut cells to give you an infection, and what is the final 
infection you get? It is SV40, which you could have gotten very nicely 
with the original infectious virus to begin with. 
Now, you will say to me no, look, you can get changed types of in- 
fections with a large amount of material. There are all kinds of potential 
hazards here and there. I have worked with SV40 for a long time and it 
hasn't killed a lot of people. 
I maintain that it is now believed that SV40 is a bit more dangerous 
than it used to be thought. There are, therefore, potential hazards in 
working with the original source material. 
I consider it legitimate, then, to compare the new method with the old 
method. 
Now, it is now illegitimate to shotgun all vertebrate DNAs, and that 
goes all the way from man down to fish. You cannot shotgun. There is a 
moratorium on this. What are the hazards in this DNA that we are afraid 
of? You have not heard much of a discussion of these hazards because they 
cannot really be defined. 
Now, generally the way the guidelines are constructed, these hazards 
are usually infectious agents, viruses. Why, because you can use embryonic 
DNA or primary tissue DNA rather than the adult. That suggests that the 
framers of these guidelines must have had viruses in their minds. 
And yet, the chances of picking one of these up, the chances of going 
through these three or four different biological containment steps are 
exceedingly rare, as I have pointed out. 
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