1 . 
Many biologists have worked hard and long to draft the Asilomar Statement 
and Woods Hole Guidelines. We admire this work tremendously and feel it a very 
positive development when a community of researchers join together planning to 
eliminate hazards from experimental design. The initial unprecedented response 
by scientists to a new technology, calling a moratorium and the subsequent 
Asilomar meeting, saying there are certain things we are wise enough to refrain 
from, brought public approval on a wide scale. 
Wow the situation in practice and on paper is in flux. Our own current 
position is that recombinant DMA experimentation is valuable in selected 
instances and hazardous in others. The problem facing the guidelines committee 
is to choose carefully those few experiments which will lead to societal benefit 
fro.ii the collection of innumerable, possible experiments, many of which will be 
too hazardous to merit being done. In stating that an experiment creating a new 
organism is too hazardous to be done, it bears clear emphasis that there is no 
issue of freedom of inquiry. We fully support complete freedom of scientific 
inquiry. However, there is here an issue of "freedom of manufacture" - the 
manufacture, in this case, of self-replicating novel organisms, which are 
potential global health hazards or ecological hazards. 
The importance of care in this manufacturing can be seen from many points 
of view. One prominent to us which has received low attention is that if a 
mistake occurs, particularly the development of a novel human pathogen, there 
might well be justified public outrage. This in turn could threaten continued 
government funding in many areas of basic biological and medical research. 
This element of self-interest of researchers in all areas should be borne in mind 
along with the other pressing reasons for insuring that the experimentation 
is done in a safe way. 
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