!!  spellx done
196  Biology Could Add Little To Hitlerian Repertoire
     The Washington Post  Saturday, February 28, 1970

     Every week, dozens of research papers on molecular biology are
published in Nature, the Journal of Molecular Biology, the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences and similar scientific journals.
They are tightly woven threads of a beautiful and intricate tapestry,
the fragments of our knowledge of the machinery of the living cell.
For the specialist, it is a formidable task to maintain a current
knowledgeability about the advances in his own field.

     The basic ideas of DNA chemistry and function are not complex by
comparison with the mathematical apparatus of modern physics or with
the intricacies of the experimental procedures by which these ideas
are tested.  Most details of incremental advances are, however, 
inaccessible to the lay reader simply because of the elaborate 
background of unfinished fabric that has to be mastered to understand 
them.  From time to time, some local pattern emerges on the collective 
loom which appears more intelligible and permits a pause in 
appreciation.

     We live in a pragmatic culture that subordinates discovery to 
invention;  many of us are quite incapable of perceiving a new insight
until we hear how it can be applied to "do" something.  At one level,
this was the appeal to scientific readers of the report some weeks ago
from Harvard of a technique for the "isolation of a gene" from 
bacteria.

     At another level, through news channels, the exposition of their
work by Drs. Jim Shapiro and Jon Beckwith emphasized hypothetical
biological engineering applications to the detriment of public clarity
about the scientific implications of their achievement.  They were
quoted as having expressed grave concern about the potential abuse of
their science--which led to some headlines in London that read,
"GENETIC BOMB FEARS GROW."

     What has not come through is precisely what they were concerned
about.  I believe they correctly pointed to the possible abuse of the
whole fabric of modern experimental biology rather than of the single
ingenious thread they helped weave into it.

     The most grievous potential for abuse was, in fact, the subject
of a major shift in U.S. policy within days of the Harvard biochemists'
report. On Nov. 25, President Nixon unilaterally pledged the 
country to drop its work on the development of biological weapons.
Subsequently, toxin weapons were included in the ban and the United
States has joined in formal proposals for global prohibitions on 
biological warfare.

     Until such agreements are ratified and implemented, the danger
still remains that the most sophisticated aspects of scientific 
biology, on the trail of the essence of life, will be mobilized in the
service of an attack on large parts of the world's population.  We
have begun to follow the right track perhaps just in time, before
other warrior nations develop comparable scientific skills in this
area and we respond with an unstoppable escalation.

     Whereas genetic engineering is a tangible reality for bacteria
and viruses, it is a futuristic speculation for direct application in
the human organism.  Closest on the horizon are some approaches toward
the engineering of viruses for the improvement of conventional vaccines,
or to reintroduce the codes for disease-related enzymes that may
be missing because of a genetic defect.

     It is not obvious how these applications raise questions much
different from those already encompassed by medical practice.  They
may also bypass any motive to deal with genetic diseases by direct 
intervention in the genes as inherited through sperms and eggs, should
this become technically possible.

     We cannot, of course, overlook the fear that an authoritarian 
regime may impose its engineered designs on the life styles of its 
subjects.  To think of this as a side-effort of biological research may
divert attention from the real dimensions of the problem, which is
slavery, and its sources in moral, social, military or political
disasters.

     Its inhuman ends have been well served historically by techniques
both frightful and insidious: Hitler's exterminatoria, forcible 
impregnation and sterilization, drugs and thought control.  Molecular 
biology will have little to add to that repertoire.

     We should nevertheless seek to extend the groundwork of law to
bolster the freedom of the person.  The prevalent laws restricting
abortion amount to compulsory pregnancy on a large scale, an intrusion
on personal freedom and privacy as repugnant as compulsory abortion.
The decision about abortion is one for private morals, but the woman
who voluntarily foregoes an unwanted child prevents a crime against him
and does a service to the community which deserves our compassionate
support.
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