Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA

Once upon a time (1975), scientists met proactively to place limits on recombinant DNA research.

Wooden boardwalk through natural dune habitat at Asilomar State Beach, California

As the COVIDcrisis winds down and the World Health Organization (WHO) ramps up its fearporn regarding “Disease X” to justify more power and money for itself, it is long past time to focus on public policy changes which can reduce the risk that humanity will be subjected to yet another engineered and weaponized infectious disease pathogen.

Personally, as a starting point and in the interests of Humanity as a whole, I advocate three initial public policy priorities:

1. Outlaw “dual purpose” gain of function virology research, and create an organization akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect, verify, and recommend sanctions on those State or non-State actors who breach the prohibition.

2. Renegotiate the “Biological Weapons Convention”, which does not prohibit biological weapons, to prohibit proliferation and deployment of all biological weapons (including “incapacitating agents”). For more on this, see “The Biological Weapons Convention does not prohibit biological weapons”, published April 2023.

3. The USA and like minded sovereign nation states should exit and withdraw funding from the WHO, which is notoriously corrupt and has been captured by Bill Gates and his “venture philanthropy” business model, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the Chinese Central Communist Party.

Once upon a time (1975), in what seems like a mythical land far, far away (California of the 70s- where I grew up), a group of scientists, lawyers, govies and journalists met to discuss the implications of a newly emerging technology (Molecular Biology and Recombinant DNA). As they considered this new technology, they foresaw both great opportunity to advance knowledge and medicine, and great risk to cause catastrophic damage to both humanity and the biosphere. In many ways, the release of the product of recombinant DNA known as SARS-CoV-2 into the human population has validated their concerns.

When I began my training in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the early 80s, the proceedings and guidance which emerged from the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA were treated with reverence and respect. Unfortunately, reinforcing the old saying that familiarity breeds contempt, over my career I have watched as the structures created to oversee and enforce scientific compliance with the guidance have gradually been diluted and disregarded. Now we seem to have a lassez-faire approach where virtually anything goes, and better to seek forgiveness than permission to proceed with whatever genetic engineering whim might strike ambitious and entitled self-anointed elite biotechnologists. All in the name of advancing knowledge (of course). Or getting grant funding, peer-reviewed publications, and academic tenure (the typical reality).

The “resistance” to the approved COVIDcrisis and jab narrative and the techno-totalitarian population controls continues to fragment into a thousand splinter groups, each shooting at others in a circular firing squad driven mad by Moral outbidding and the resulting purity spirals. All Physicians, Scientists, and Government employees are lumped together and repeatedly vilified by these new moral guardians, who are just as quick as ever to send erstwhile former allies and truth tellers off to a virtual Madame Guillotine, much as Robespierre and the Jacobins did during the French Revolution.

At this moment, it is worth remembering that at one point in time, a small group of people who were at the cutting edge of the biotechnology revolution (ergo psychologically adult grown ups) came together at a small California seaside resort to talk, think, and make recommendations for how to proceed with recombinant DNA research in a responsible and ethical manner. Of course, that was before the Bayh-Dole act of 1980 and the explosion of wealth that many of these early pioneers experienced with the founding of Genentech, Amgen, Biogen, Cetus, and Genex and other early biotech startups which leveraged recombinant DNA technology to yield enormous innovations and increase in market capitalization.

Today this seems akin to the myth of Camelot. But once upon a time, Asilomar did happen.

Perhaps, in a post-COVID world, if we are actually allowed to know and discuss the truth of what we have all been subjected to by shadowy globalist forces, something like Asilomar could happen again. Or maybe the world has progressed to the point where, like King Arthur, this will remain a mythical impossibility; a reverberating longing for what once was, a once and future commitment to Humanity and ethics.

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The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA was held in February 1975 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. The conference was organized to discuss the potential biohazards and regulation of biotechnology, particularly the biohazards presented by recombinant DNA.

The main outcome of the conference was the establishment of principles and guidelines for conducting experiments using this technology. The scientists agreed that research with recombinant DNA should proceed, but under stringent guidelines and appropriate safeguards.

They categorized the appropriate safeguards into three groups, including barriers and different levels of containment for labs working with recombinant DNA. The conference marked the beginning of an era of public discussion and stringent guidelines for the research involving recombinant DNA. The conference was a significant event in the history of biotechnology, as it led to the establishment of guidelines for researchers to continue their work with recombinant DNA under what were believed to be safe conditions while establishing appropriate ethical boundaries for such research.

Paul Berg was one of the organizers of the International Congress on Recombinant DNA Molecules held in Asilomar, 24–27 February 1975. He became the Cahill professor emeritus of biochemistry, and director emeritus of the Beckman Center of Molecular and Genetic Medicine, at Stanford University. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980 and the US National Medal of Science in 1983. Dr. Berg summarized the context and events which gave rise to the Asilomar conference in a 2008 historical review and autobiography published in Nature. The article now provides a time-tunnel through which we can look back at the prior conditions which yielded this meeting, and can help guide those considering future public policy actions such as those I have outlined above.

At one time, responsible leaders from the scientific community, together with lawyers, journalists and government officials, came together to develop and present a plan of action to the world. If something similar were to happen today, that might go a long way towards beginning to rebuild the trust in medicine, science, and academia which has been so deeply damaged by the arbitrary and capricious actions that have characterized the global COVIDcrisis response since the fall of 2019.

However, as Dr. Berg presciently warned, “Once scientists from corporations begin to dominate the research enterprise, it will simply be too late.”

He could not have foreseen the rise of massive non-governmental “public health” organizations such as the Gates Foundation and the current embodiments of the UN, WHO and WEF. Or that “public health” would be distorted to become a weapon to serve and advance a variety of political and financial objectives.

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Meetings that changed the world

Asilomar 1975: DNA modification secured

Paul Berg. Nature volume 455, pages 290–291 (2008)

The California meeting set standards allowing geneticists to push research to its limits without endangering public health. Organizer Paul Berg asks if another such meeting could resolve today's controversies.

Today, the benefits of genetic engineering, and the risks and ethical dilemmas that it presents, are part of everyday public discourse, thrashed out in newspaper columns and by politicians and commentators everywhere. In the early 1970s, it was a very different picture. Scientists were only just learning how to manipulate DNA from various sources into combinations that were not known to exist naturally. Although they were confident that the new technology offered considerable opportunities, the potential health and environmental risks were unclear.

The people who sounded the alarm about this new line of experimentation were not politicians, religious groups or journalists, as one might expect: they were scientists. They called for a worldwide moratorium on the work, followed by an international conference of experts at which the nature and magnitude of the risks could be assessed. At that gathering, the International Congress on Recombinant DNA Molecules, held at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, in February 1975, it was agreed that the research should continue but under stringent guidelines. The conference marked the beginning of an exceptional era for science and for the public discussion of science policy.

Cancer-carrying bacteria

Some of the concerns about recombinant DNA experimentation stemmed from my own work with the Simian Virus 40 (SV40), which can produce tumors in rodents. My aim was to use SV40 to introduce new genes into mammalian cells. Because the DNA of SV40 can integrate into the chromosomes of infected cells, I reasoned that any 'foreign DNA' associated with it would also become part of the infected cell's genetic make-up, and consequently we might be able to study the foreign DNA's expression in mammalian cells. To test this, we inserted a segment of DNA containing three Escherichia coli genes responsible for the metabolism of the sugar galactose into the genome of the Simian Virus.

Several scientists feared that bacteria carrying SV40 DNA might escape and cause cancer in people infected, so we chose to defer our experiments until we could be sure that the risk was nonexistent. Most researchers, like me, acknowledged that the new technology opened extraordinary avenues for genetics and could ultimately lead to exceptional opportunities in medicine, agriculture and industry. But we conceded that unfettered pursuit of these goals might have unforeseen and damaging consequences for human health and Earth's ecosystems.

Credit: DAVID PARKINS

Earlier, in mid-1974, I had led a committee that communicated those concerns to the president of the US National Academy of Sciences and published them in Science, Nature and in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. We recommended a voluntary moratorium on certain recombinant DNA experiments that were considered potentially hazardous. The committee was particularly concerned that introduced genes could change normally innocuous microbes into cancer-causing agents or into human pathogens, resistant to antibiotics or able to produce dangerous toxins.

Scientists around the world hotly debated the wisdom of our call for caution, and the press had a field day conjuring up fantastical 'what if' scenarios. Yet the moratorium was universally observed in academic and industrial research centers. Meanwhile, the public seemed comforted by the fact that the freeze had been proposed by the very people who had helped to develop the technology.

The press had a field day conjuring up fantastical 'what if' scenarios.

We also proposed an international conference at which scientists and appropriate experts could assess the risks of recombinant DNA technology and devise ways of reducing them. With the backing of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institutes of Health, I and four others — David Baltimore, Sydney Brenner, Richard Roblin and Maxine Singer — drew up the agenda for the conference. Its main aim was to consider whether to lift the voluntary moratorium and, if so, what conditions to impose to ensure that the research could proceed safely. Non-scientists were also encouraged to join in, and the approximately 140 participants included scientists, lawyers, journalists and government officials.

As might be expected, there was considerable disagreement during the conference about the existence and magnitude of the purported risks. Some biologists and public officials were certain that recombinant DNA research was flirting with disaster and that lifting the moratorium would be a blunder. Others argued that the research was safe. Heated discussions carried on during the breaks, at meal times, over drinks and well into the small hours. I was struck by how often scientists willingly acknowledged the risks in other's experiments but not in their own. Brenner repeatedly warned of the consequences of doing nothing, predicting that such apparently self-serving behavior would be publicly condemned and that government interference or even legislation would follow.

The turning point

What turned the debate around was the suggestion to assign a risk estimate to the different types of experiments envisaged, and to apply safety guidelines of varying stringency according to the degree of risk. This system worked on two levels. The first was physical containment, whereby the degree of risk was matched with the type of laboratory facility required. So, experiments with little or no risk could be done on an open bench; those with some risk might require laminar flow hoods; a high risk might necessitate an airlock and a laboratory under negative pressure; whereas experiments using known human pathogens would be either prohibited or restricted to specialized facilities. Brenner suggested this should be supplemented with an additional, biological level of containment to minimize the damage should engineered organisms escape into the environment. Thus in cloning experiments that were judged to be of little or no risk, researchers could work on relatively innocuous organisms such as widely used lab strains of E. coli and Bacillus subtilis; riskier experiments would have to use bacteria that had been genetically modified so they could not survive outside the laboratory.

Participants agreed on the final day of the conference that research should continue, but under stringent restrictions. The recommendations formed the basis of the official US guidelines on research involving recombinant DNA, issued in July 1976. They have proved remarkably effective.

In the 33 years since Asilomar, researchers around the world have carried out countless experiments with recombinant DNA without reported incident. Many of these experiments were inconceivable in 1975, yet as far as we know, none has been a hazard to public health. Moreover, the fear among scientists that artificially moving DNA among species would have profound effects on natural processes has substantially disappeared with the discovery that such exchanges occur in nature.

The promised land

What of the benefits of allowing researchers to continue to work with recombinant DNA? In 1975, many scientists predicted that the technology would soon yield important drugs, industrial products and improved agricultural varieties.

In fact, such developments have taken longer than anticipated. Some have never been realized because identifying the genes responsible for producing certain products or conditions, and learning how to manipulate them usefully has been more difficult than expected. Since the mid-1980s, however, the number of products has risen continually. Genetically modified hormones, vaccines, therapeutic agents and diagnostic tools are enhancing medical practice. Genetically engineered food plants are being grown and sold for consumption in both developed and developing countries. A thriving biotechnology industry has created products, jobs and wealth for scientists and others. Very few Asilomar attendees foresaw this great potential — nor could we have predicted the pace at which our fundamental understanding of biology has grown.

Apart from laying the foundations for an effective safety regime, what else did Asilomar achieve? First and foremost, I feel that scientists were able to gain the public's trust — something that is now much more difficult for researchers working in biotechnology. Because some 15% of the participants at Asilomar were from the media, the public was well informed about the deliberations, as well as the bickering, accusations, wavering views and ultimately the consensus. Many scientists feared that a public debate would place crippling restrictions on molecular biology, but the effort encouraged responsible discussion that led to a consensus that most researchers supported.

Could an Asilomar-type conference help resolve some of the controversies now confronting scientists and the public — such as over fetal tissue, embryonic stem-cell research, somatic and germ-line gene therapy and the genetic modification of food crops? I believe that it would be much more difficult to organize such an event today. In the 1970s, most of the scientists engaged in recombinant DNA research were working in public institutions and were therefore able to get together and voice opinions without having to look over their shoulders. This is no longer the case — as many scientists now work for private companies where commercial considerations are paramount.

Related to this is that so many issues in science and technology today are beset by economic self-interest and, increasingly, by nearly irreconcilable ethical and religious conflicts, as well as by challenges to deeply held social values. A conference that sets out to find a consensus among such contentious views would, I believe, be doomed to acrimony and policy stagnation.

That said, there is a lesson in Asilomar for all of science: the best way to respond to concerns created by emerging knowledge or early-stage technologies is for scientists from publicly-funded institutions to find common cause with the wider public about the best way to regulate — as early as possible.

Once scientists from corporations begin to dominate the research enterprise, it will simply be too late.

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