8/17/87.
Proposal for a publication by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on:
The Genetic Revolution and the Public
Bernard D. Davis

Background

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has sponsored several
interdisciplinary publications on the interactions of science and the public.
These include an issue of Daedalus (Summer, 1974), organized by Gerald Holton,
on "Science and Its Public: the Changing Relationship;" another (Spring 1978),
organized by G. Holton and R. Morison, on "Limits of Scientific Inquiry;" and
a volume (Univ. of California Press, 19 ) on "Progress and Its Discontents."
Meanwhile, controversy over the social impacts of science and technology has
grown, especially in connection with the dramatic advances in the biomedical
sciences made possible by the development of the recombinant DNA methodology.
Indeed, in the foreword to a collection of my essays ("Storm Over Biology")
Prof. Edward Shils expressed the conviction that we face a growing anti-
science movement, and that it is insufficiently recognized because its growth
is so gradual and because it is intimately linked to a more positive public
interest in science.

Discussion with Prof. Shils and a number of colleagues led to the
formation of a steering committee of the Academy, which endorsed the view that
a volume on this subject would be timely. The group further recommended that
we enfold the topic of the anti-science movement within a broader framework,
and that we sharpen the focus of the volume by concentrating on biology, and
particularly on the impact of advances in molecular genetics and related
aspects of cell biology.

We could also include other areas of advance in the biomedical sciences
that are equally of public concern, such as innovations in human reproduction
(e.g., Surrogate motherhood, embryo research), expensive procedures in
medicine, and the far-reaching consequences of changing practices in
agriculture. It is not clear whether these would make the volume too large or
whether they would better round out a discussion of public apprehensions.
These topics are listed here as options. If they are included one might
replace "The Genetic Revolution" in the title of the symposium by "The New
Biology".

Content '

The volume has two main purposes:

1) To distinguish real from excessively conjectural problems, in a number
of specific areas in biology; to compare these with parallel problems in the
physical sciences and technologies; and to engage in some prediction about
probable future developments. We would hope to present a set of definitive
and responsible statements on a series of issues that have been the subject of
considerable controversy.
2) To dissect the factors that contribute to public apprehension in this
area, as a paradigm for concern about all science and technology. This
part of the project is the most novel, since there are numerous other symposia
on the technical aspects of genetic engineering. It is also the most
important (as well as the most difficult). The American Academy is in a
particularly good position to select authors and reviewers who could consider
these problems within a broad philosophical and social framework.

The Audience

The discussion of the social and philosophical aspects of the subject
will overlap with parts of the earlier volume on "Progress and Its
Discontents." However, that book received less attention than it deserved -~
perhaps because it was rather long, and its focus and title were too abstract
to arouse much interest outside circles of philosophers and historians. The
proposed volume should interest a wider audience, since it would present a
briefer exposition of these problems and would link them with concrete issues
in biology that are prominent in the daily news. Indeed, we would hope not
only to dissect the issues for a scholarly audience but also to have some
impact on a broader public -- high school science teachers might be the bench
mark. The papers should therefore be written with this goal in mind.
Moreover, because it will probably require about two years to complete the
project, it is important that the discussion of topical problems be presented
in a framework that will retain interest after they have dropped out of the
news, and will hopefully improve the response to similar future problems.

We would plan to publish this collection of essays as an issue of
Daedalus, which would assure a broad scholarly audience. In addition, because
of our broader aim, it would be important to plan to present the same material
also as a book. The Academy has occasionally sponsored such double
publication in the past on issues of sufficiently broad interest -- for
example, arms control.

Prof. Shils, strongly convinced of the need for a long-term defense
against the anti-science movement, has further urged that we plan for a
continuing series of short books, which would have a more prolonged impact
than any single volume. If the proposed volume is successful it could serve
as the springboard for such a series.
8/17/87
Suggested topics and authors for Amer. Acad. volume.

[The outlines are rather detailed, to provide a basis for judging the
relevance of the topic and to invite further suggestions; the authors who are
finally selected will no doubt deviate a good deal from these outlines.
Suggestions of alternatives to the proposed authors are also welcome. ]

The Genetic Revolution and the Public

1. Introduction B. D. Davis

In describing the purpose of this volume, this piece would first provide
a brief perspective on the development of the fields of microbial and
molecular genetics, and on the reasons that their practical applications were
delayed so long, until the recombinant DNA methodology. It would then survey
briefly the history of the widespread public anxiety in the 1970s over these
applications. In addition, since molecular genetics also offers fresh and
growing insights into aspects of human biology that have long generated public
controversy -- our evolutionary origin and our diversity -- it seems
appropriate for this volume also to consider these insights, and their
inevitable future expansion. Various topics in this essay might be handled
either very briefly or at greater length, depending on how they are covered in
the following papers. This introduction might also summarize briefly the
content of these papers; but if it is to lay down the historical background
this summary might better be a separate foreword.

2. Sources of Public Concern ? E. Shils (Chicago)
? J. Lederberg (Rockefeller)

Much of the public concern over biotechnology involves remote,
hypothetical dangers, generated by extrapolation from the real dangers or
harms created by physical technologies. Another extrapolation leads from our
increasing affluence and physical security to an expectation of almost
absolute security. A more general problem involves limits: extrapolation from
the ability of science to answer questions about nature to the assumption that
it can be equally applied to questions involving values; and resulting
criticism for the failure of scientists to tackle such urgent problems as the
deterioration of our inner cities. This last topic might include a brief
discussion of the relations between the social sciences and the natural
sciences.

Other concerns, however, have a more realistic foundation: the delayed
recognition that the benefits of technology are coupled with large costs,
including possible annihilation in nuclear war, exhaustion of resources and
increasing pollution, unequal global distribution of improved food production
and disease control, and uncontrollable population growth. It is also easy to
understand the fear that the application of genetic engineering to humans for
therapeutic purposes will inevitably lead to a hubris in which man "plays
God;" and similarly, increasing ability to predict health problems may give us
more knowledge about our futures than we can comfortably handle. In still
another, more abstract area of concern, scientific insights threaten religious
dogmas that have provided both comfort and the traditional foundation for a
moral consensus in the West. Recognizing that science has created a real
problem by undermining this foundation without supplying an adequate
replacement for most people, the paper might express some sympathy for those
who fear that this development will lead to -- and, indeed, has already
fostered -- extreme moral relativism.

We might need two papers here, one rebutting false charges of the anti-
science movement, and the other on those criticisms of science and technology
that merit attention, and on ways of responding to them. In an earlier issue
of Daedalus T. Roszak played the latter role, but his views were so extreme
that I did not find them interesting. Possible candidates: J. Starobinski
(Geneva); R. Lifton (Yale).

3. Contributions from the History and Philosophy of Science C. Gillispie
(Princeton)

Shifts in the views of many philosophers and historians of science have
contributed to a decrease of confidence in the ultimate value and reliability
of its products, and this influence is seen in the attitudes of many science
writers (see below). This paper would discuss the widespread questioning of
the objectivity of science in recent years, including contributions of the
externalist interpretation of the history of science, Kuhnian paradigms
overemphasizing the tentative and transient nature of all conceptual schemes
in science, Marxists moved by their political ideals to try to impose
dialectical approaches on biology, and social scientists emphasizing the
similarity of their fields to the natural sciences. Further analysis of the
problem of objectivity would include discussion of the multiple meanings of
"science" (as a methodology, an activity, and a body of knowledge), and the
difference between the uncertainties at the growing points (which tend to be
emphasized in science reporting) and the reliability of the major body of
knowledge. The paper could also include discussion of fraud, especially in
the medical sciences, as a major area of current criticism of the scientific
community; and this discussion could point out that the scientific community
has found it most efficient to eliminate error largely by neglect, rather than
by the active purification of the literature demanded by some amateur science
"critics." The topic of fraud, however, might be too peripheral.-

Since this area is controversial a second point of view might be in
order. Candidate: L. Graham.

4. Changing Roles of Science Writers ? S. Rothman (Amherst ?)

The older generation of science writers for newspapers and magazines in
general loved and admired science, while many of the younger science writers
today mix this attitude with a good deal of suspicion of science (as of all
institutions), eagerness to emphasize social and moral implications (where
they are more on a level with their subjects), and a tendency to insert
critical insights despite the limited depth of their knowledge. The history
of how the news media have spread alarm over the hypothetical dangers from
recombinant bacteria, including excessive attention in recent years to the
pronouncements of Jeremy Rifkin, could illustrate the problem. Some of the
topics suggested for the immediately preceding essay might better fit here.

Alternatively, this topic could be approached by focusing entirely on the
history of the recombinant DNA controversy, ending with a discussion of the
problems faced by the news media in handling controversies over highly
technical issues, and the problem the scientific community faces in trying to
educate the public on such issues. A "dark-horse" candidate for this paper
would be Ullica Segerstrale, a young sociologist of science (now in Finland),
whose thesis at Harvard, on the Wilson-Lewontin controversy, has become a
brilliant paper (Biol. and Philos., Vol. 1, No. 1) and a forthcoming book.
? Comment by a science writer or a teacher in the growing number of
courses for science journalists. ?Victor McElhenny (MIT).

5. Public Presentation of Science in the Soviet Union S. Kapitsa

This topic was suggested with great enthusiasm by Max Perutz. Kapitsa,
the son of the eminent physicist, is an academician whose television programs
are a major source of public education on science in the USSR, and Prof.
Perutz is confident that after reading the other papers in this volume he
could provide a thoughtful comparison with the way issues of science and
society are handled in his country. Such a comparison is not central to our
theme, but it might be a very interesting addition, which would not be likely
to find another appropriate place for publication. Kapitsa apparently visits
the USA from time to time and might be able to meet with the group of authors
when they go over each other's drafts.

6. Applications to Humans A. Motulsky (U. Washington);
B. Muller-Hill (Koln)

The two proposed authors and I will be the speakers on social aspects of
genetic engineering at a symposium at the International Congress of Genetics
next year. Either of them would do a fine job of summarizing what kinds of
gene therapy are possible or likely, in somatic cells or in the germ line, and
what scenarios under current discussion are excessively remote. Muller-Hill,
who spent some years at Harvard, has the advantage that he can combine a
defense of desirable forms of therapy with a sensitive discussion of the
distortions of genetics under the Nazis -~ a subject on which he has written a
book in German. This essay should also discuss an aspect of molecular
genetics that has much wider applicability than therapy, and is already at
hand and rapidly expanding: tests for defective genes, which provide the
option of selective abortion when conducted prenatally.

7. Engineered Bacteria and the H. Schneiderman (Monsanto);
Environment Maxine Singer (Carnegie Inst.)

Microbes, modified by classical techniques of selection of spontaneous
variants, have been used for thousands of years in making bread, wine, and
cheese, and more recently in antibiotic manufacture and as microbial
pesticides and nitrogen fixers in agriculture. The recombinant DNA technology
accelerates and broadens the possibility of such domestication, and there is
no reasonable basis for expecting recombinants between non-pathogenic
organisms to result inadvertently in disease or other adverse effects. But
while this issue was settled some years ago for accidental release of
recombinants from the laboratory, it has arisen anew for proposed deliberate
introduction, on a larger scale, into the environment -- even though the key
factor is ability to compete and spread and to do harm, rather than scale of
introduction. An unusual feature of this problem, meriting discussion, is the
wide split between microbiologists and ecologists. The result has been
excessively restrictive regulations by the EPA in the USA, and a complete ban
for 5 years in certain European countries.

This paper might include a review of the earlier controversy, over
accidental release from the laboratory, unless it is covered adequately in
other papers.

Both the authors suggested here have written excellent
papers dispelling wild fears of recombinant organisms; Schneiderman is closer
to the specific problems of bacteria engineered for use in agriculture,
Because the subject is controversial a comment by an ecologist who is not
excessively alarmist might be useful. ?R. May (Princeton); Jared Diamond
(UCLA)

8. Genetic Engineering and Animal Rights Robert R. Marshak (U. Penn)

The animal rights movement would deserve a symposium of its own.
However, a short essay tracing its origins and analyzing its present state
would be in order in this volume, as a conspicuous example of the anti-science
movement, and one strongly focused today on developments involving genetics
(transgenic animals; the patenting of genetically modified animals). In
addition, animal testing will be an essential intermediate step in most
applications of advances in molecular biology to medicine. Finally, the
engineering of agricultural animals promises benefits that deserve more public
attention (e.g., development of meat with a low content of the fatty acids
that promote atherosclerosis). This topic arose from a discussion with Dr.
Marshak (recently retired as Dean of the Veterinary School at U. Penn.), and
with his colleague Leon Weiss.

9. Molecular Evidence on Evolution F, Ayala (Davis, CA)

This paper would touch only briefly on the voluminous literature on the
creationist controversy and would emphasize the direct nature of the evidence
from comparative biochemistry and from DNA sequences, complementing the
traditional but gap-filled fossil record. This evidence also answers the
charge that evolutionary biology is not sufficiently predictive to fulfill the
requirements of a science: for a correlation between phenotypic divergence and
divergence in DNA sequence is a strong prediction. This presentation could be
coupled with a recognition of the real problems that underly the objections of
religious groups, unless that topic is fully covered in essay #2. Lest the
paper seem to be flogging a dead horse, it should summarize evidence for the
extraordinarily limited acceptance of evolution in the American public. It
might also discuss the reasons for this resistance, and the possible
implications for a parallel receptivity to myths in areas of more immediate
concern for social and political policy.

10. Biological Insights into Human Diversity B. D. Davis

The role of genetics in human behavioral differences has been a
passionately contested issue within the academic as well as the political
community, but not one closely linked to molecular genetics. However, with
the rapid growth of molecular studies in neurobiology there can be little doubt
that the next decade or two will see the sterile controversies over the
heritability of IQ replaced by direct identification of molecular bases for
subtle individual differences in behavioral traits, as has already been done
for such major defects as phenylketonuria or bipolar (manic-depressive)
affective disorders. In addition, the prospect of genetically mapping and
then sequencing the entire human genome is drawing close, and it will provide
a foundation for precise definition of the genetic basis of differences
between individuals in all kinds of traits.

Meanwhile, if the evidence from molecular genetics increases public
acceptance of evolution (the preceding topic) it should thereby increase
acceptance of a fundamental evolutionary principle: that our species could not
have evolved so rapidly in its behavioral traits without a large reservoir of
genetic diversity. The paper could also emphasize a) the need to recognize the
evolutionary and social value of that diversity, rather than to try to solve
social problems by denying it; b) the role of biology in replacing traditional
typological (essentialist) concepts of race by populational concepts (as
emphasized by E. Mayr); and c) the contribution of this development to our
contemporary rejection of the notion that specific capacities of individuals
can be inferred from their membership in an ethnic group.

If this topic seems too far from the central theme of the volume the last
part could be dropped.

?Comment : E. Mayr

ll. Role of the Courts 2?

The field testing of ice-minus bacteria, as agents to inhibit frost
damage of crops, was approved by the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the
National Institutes of Health four years ago, because there were exceptionally
strong scientific grounds for considering the strain safe. However, the tests
were delayed until this year by legal actions of Mr. Jeremy Rifkin and by
bureaucratic regulations. They have now been conducted, with no harm except
unwarranted public apprehension, a waste of money, and delay in developing a
potentially valuable product. The initial court granted Mr. Rifkin's suit on
the grounds that it could not judge the scientific issue, but since there were
scientists testifying on both sides the plaintiffs had a plausible case. The
appeals court ruled that while there was no serious basis for inferring danger
the NIH Committee had no written record to show that it had taken a
sufficiently "hard look" at the novel issue of deliberate release of bacteria
to the environment. These judgments raise questions about the suitability of
our present legal procedures for handling highly technical issues of this
kind, and so an analysis by a legal expert, including discussion of previous
suggestions of "science courts," might be an interesting addition to the
volume.

?Comment Kantrowitz (Dartmouth)
Optional Additional Topics
12, Genetic Engineering and Our Food Supply ?Jean Mayer (Tufts)

The applications of genetic engineering to livestock and to plants will
surely result in large innovations, including the possibility of using higher
plants to produce valuable proteins more cheaply than microbes, changing the
composition of meat and crops, and adapting crop plants to growth on
previously unproductive land. There is controversy at present over the use of
hormones (administered or in transgenic animals) to increase meat or milk
production, and over the pollution arising from the heavy fertilization of
crops engineered for a high nitrogen demand; but these topics are not major
sources of criticism of genetic engineering.

13. Changing Expectations of Medicine A. Relman (NEJ Med.)

The public tends to extrapolate from the striking advances in medicine to
the expectation of perfection in the control of disease. A discussion of
this problem would parallel a theme found in several of the preceding essays:
that failure to recognize limits gives rise to misconceptions and illusions.
This essay could also provide balance by reminding us that some of the most
impressive advances (e.g., in the treatment of coronary thrombosis) have been
in the area of physiology and not molecular biology. Without going into
detail on the problem of the changing economics of medical care, the article
could also touch on the problems created by the ability of advances in biology
to lead to ever more expensive applications to medicine, and also the problems
created by the shifting age distribution of the population. This article
would thus include prime examples of both real and imaginary problems
associated with scientific advances.

14. Neurosciences and Psychiatry S. Snyder (Johns Hopkins)

Rapid advances in neurobiology and neuropharmacology have resulted in
increasing insight into biological aspects of human behavior, including the
identification of neurohomones and receptors that promise to revolutionize the
design of drugs and the analysis of function. Meanwhile, the use of the
available drugs has been replacing verbal therapy in the treatment of a
variety of behavioral problems and symptoms. At the same time, serious
problems have been created by large-scale deinstitutionalization of patients
who cannot take care of themselves.

This paper is not very closely connected with the central theme.
However, it provides an example of how lack of wisdom in the applications of a
scientific advance have created a problem. The paper also may overlap with
the one on human diversity, but it could further consider the promise of
increasing insights into biological aspects of criminal behavior, as an area
where public interpretations are likely to involve either excessive
expectations or resistance on moral or ideological grounds.
Other topics that have been suggested, but that seem too peripheral:

Population, Technology, and the Loss of Biodiversity. E. 0. Wilson

Limits of Science M. Perutz; G. Holton;
F, Jacob
Would include a discussion of the basic differences between the natural
and the social sciences -- e.g., the problem of extending science to
subjective aspects of human behavior, involving value judgments; and the public
misconception that the scientific method can solve any problems. Perhaps

comment could be invited from a social scientist who might consider the line
between natural and social sciences less sharp, and might question the
traditional emphasis of scientists on strictly dissociating the search for
truths about nature (including people) from their social implications.