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Remember Asilomar?
reexamining science’s ethical and
social responsibility
162
We were a bunch of academics—focused, idealistic, and often naïve—trying to do good, strug-
gling to reconcile our conflicts, our apprehensions, our scientific ambitions, our careers, our some-
times murky sense of obligation and emerge with a practical resolution: proceed, carefully.A mid-
dle ground was reached—too restrictive for some, insufficiently restrictive for others....But
Asilomar surely helped in many ways to launch the complex world of biotechnology we know
today.
—Robert Sinsheimer
WHO REMEMBERS ASILOMAR? A generation ago, it was a familiar name for
most molecular biologists and many other scientists, as well as science
journalists, politicians, and members of the public concerned about the “biohaz-
ards” posed by the then-new field of recombinant DNA research. At the time,
the term “Asilomar” was shorthand for a singular moment in the annals of sci-
ence: a voluntary moratorium at the frontiers of science.
In the most literal sense,“Asilomar” refers to the rustic retreat on the Monterey
Peninsula where, in February 1975, 140 biologists and physicians and four lawyers
gathered to examine recombinant DNA’s possible technical and scientific risks
and to consider how they could be controlled. Pending the resolution worked
*Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
90089-0071.
Email: acapron@law.usc.edu.
†6413 Antietam Lane, Madison,WI 53705.
Email: rschapir@facstaff.wisc.edu.
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, volume 44, number 2 (spring 2001):162–69
© 2001 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
Alexander M. Capron*and Renie Schapiro†
Remember Asilomar?
spring 2001 • volume 44, number 2 163
out at Asilomar, scientists around the world had curtailed their experiments.
Given the normal drives of curiosity, competition, and celebrity, it took great
leadership to inspire scientists to forgo their cutting-edge research, even for a few
months. Thus, it is hardly surprising that several of the scientists who led the
Asilomar process were later honored by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award.
Yet even at that time, some observers regarded Asilomar as not solely an instance
of scientific responsibility but also of scientific autonomy, that is, as an attempt by
scientific leaders to maintain control in the face of possible regulation. In this
view,Asilomar was a peremptory strike aimed at shielding science from the pub-
lic and its elected representatives. By exercising a measure of self-restraint, scien-
tists could reassure the public that they could be trusted to take appropriate
account of the public welfare in the way they carried out their research.
Since the February 1975 meeting was both a response to earlier events and a
prologue to future ones,the term “Asilomar” is often used for the whole process
of scientific self-control around recombinant DNA, from the events precipitat-
ing the meeting to the actions that flowed from it. It encompasses initial con-
cerns about the safety of early gene slicing experiments expressed at the June
1973 Gordon Conference on Nucleic Acids, and published in a letter to Science
that September, signed by the conference co-chairs, Maxine Singer and Dieter
Söll. Those concerns prompted the National Academy of Sciences to create an
ad hoc study group, chaired by Paul Berg, which in July 1974 took the extraor-
dinary action of calling for a worldwide moratorium on certain types of exper-
iments and caution in undertaking others.The group also recommended that an
international conference be convened and an advisory committee be established
at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Donald Fredrickson, the NIH director, soon appointed a group which
became the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee or, as it is now commonly
called, the RAC.And with support from the NIH and others, Berg and his plan-
ning committee set about arranging the international conference for the
Asilomar conference center at the end of the following February. Berg and his
colleagues from Stanford had met there before; indeed, several years earlier, bio-
medical scientists met to consider the dangers of DNA in cancer viruses.
Although that meeting resulted in neither new public policies nor public atten-
tion to the issues, it is still regarded in some circles as the first “Asilomar meet-
ing” on the risks in DNA research, so the 1975 meeting is sometimes referred
to as Asilomar 2.
Although broader in focus than the earlier meeting, the 1975 Asilomar con-
ference still focused on technical safety issues and set aside the broader social and
ethical implications of this new research. Participants agreed on graduated safety
guidelines, which were calibrated to the anticipated risk of the experiments.The
new RAC, which met nearby immediately after the conference ended, adopted
the Asilomar recommendations as interim rules for federally supported labora-
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Alexander M. Capron and Renie Schapiro
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
tories. Flexibility was key to the design: restrictions could be changed in response
to increased understandings of risks involved.
The concerns expressed about the biohazards of the new technology quickly
spread beyond the circle of molecular and microbiologists whose work was most
directly affected. Twelve journalists were invited to the Asilomar 2 meeting.
While they had to agree not to file their reports until the conclusion of the con-
ference, interest in the issues was great, and the conference received extensive
coverage.Articles appeared in publications ranging from Nature to the Wall Street
Journal, from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to Rolling Stone.The public—fol-
lowed by policy makers—took notice. What grabbed everyone’s attention, of
course, were the amazing feats being produced (or predicted) by the scientists.
But the meeting itself was widely regarded as a landmark in science, signaling a
willingness of researchers to engage in open, honest dialogue about the implica-
tions of their work.
Today, who remembers Asilomar? Senior researchers who themselves attended
the meeting or who waited back home in their labs for word from the Monterey
Peninsula about what experiments they could undertake report that their stu-
dents and postdoctoral fellows today seem surprisingly unaware of the events of
1975.After a flurry of initial interest, the Asilomar process has received relatively
little attention from social scientists and lawyers. And the public and politicians—
with their notoriously short time-horizons—seem also to have forgotten
Asilomar, now that it is not a matter of media attention.
Why hasn’t the Asilomar process been revived to address controversial appli-
cations of the new genetic technology that have arisen over the past 25 years?
The framework that resulted from Asilomar (both the substantive standards and
the process of ongoing oversight) helped to ensure the success of recombinant
DNA research and, by avoiding problems, may have diverted continued atten-
tion to the meeting, which was prompted by concerns that the biohazards might
not be so easily controlled.Yet for all the success of the framework, the Asilomar
process was not invoked for other, newer areas of biotechnology, such as genet-
ically modified foods, gene therapy, and genomics.
What then is the legacy of Asilomar 2? Twenty-five years to the month after
that meeting was held,Alex Capron assembled another group at Asilomar to reex-
amine what transpired then and to consider the utility of the Asilomar process for
resolving the growing range of issues raised by the process and products of scien-
tific research (Asilomar Symposium on Science, Ethics, and Society, <http://
www.usc.edu/dept/law/Pacific_Center/Main_Links/Asilomar.html>). Capron,
University Professor of Law and Medicine at the University of Southern
California and Co-Director of the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics,
was one of the handful of lawyers who had been at the 1975 meeting. The plan-
ning committee included others from the earlier meeting (David Baltimore,
Joshua Lederberg, and Maxine Singer, in addition to Berg); funding was provided
by the Greenwall Foundation, the Eugene Garfield Foundation, and the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation. Among the 50 or so participants in Asilomar 3 were about a
dozen people who were at Asilomar 2, including several from that meeting’s
organizing committee. This time, along with scientists and lawyers, the organiz-
ers invited historians, social scientists, philosophers, government officials, and pub-
lic interest representatives. Scientists working in the field participated, as did
scholars and activists who have criticized it. Experts from England, Canada,
Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, where issues of scientific responsibility have
emerged and been addressed in varied ways, were also present.The meeting was
open to the press.
In the three-day symposium, the conferees considered questions such as
“What became of the consensus reached at Asilomar and how has it affected the
development of genetic technologies?” “Among mechanisms to grapple with
these issues, is the Asilomar model still useful, has it been superseded, or has it
had a pervasive (and perhaps not fully appreciated) influence on public policy-
making?”The purpose of the symposium was not to revisit recombinant DNA
policies, much less to decide what should be done about current issues. Instead,
the focus was on the model itself: to what extent is a process that is scientist-ini-
tiated and scientist-led suitable for dealing with contemporary problems? What
amounts to responsible behavior on the part of scientists and of the society that
nurtures them and benefits from their work?
The Asilomar 3 conference was divided into four sessions: (1) The Path to
Asilomar and the Road Beyond; (2) The Public: Alerted, Educated, Unduly
Alarmed?; (3) Contending with Contemporary Issues in Light of the Accom-
plishments and Shortcomings of Asilomar; and (4) Asilomar Then and Now:What
Roles for Scientists, the Press, Policymakers and the Public-at-Large? There was
no formal attempt to reach consensus, but there was general agreement on sev-
eral major points and a mix of perspectives and viewpoints on other topics.This
introduction provides an overview of some of the major discussion points at the
meeting. It is followed by selected papers delivered at the conference.
From the outset, it was clear that much had changed in the 25 years since sci-
entists last gathered at Asilomar. The profound differences reflect not only the
state of the science but, importantly, its social context as well. The decision to
limit the agenda of Asilomar 2 to technical health and safety issues—topics
within the scientists’ purview—was hailed by organizers Berg and Singer 25
years later as perhaps the single most important decision in planning the meet-
ing. It enabled the scientists to focus on, and ultimately agree to, a concrete
course of action.The inclusion of social and ethical implications of the research,
Berg argued, would have bogged down the meeting in fruitless debate.
Yet it was clear that in the year 2000 scientists can no longer debate the impli-
cations of genetic technologies and choose to set those issues aside.The public
is today deeply engaged in debating the risks of genetic technologies in very per-
sonal terms—not simply as the scientists define them. The uproar, particularly in
Europe, over genetically modified foods is a clear case in point. In addition, the
Remember Asilomar?
spring 2001 • volume 44, number 2 165
emergence of a powerful commercial and entrepreneurial presence in the field
has engendered conflicts of interest for scientists and put their credibility on the
line. Conferees also noted that Asilomar 2 cannot be separated from its unique
time. It was a product not only of the scientific revolution of the period, but also
the pervasive spirit of social responsibility reflected in that era’s antiwar protests,
environmental activism, and civil rights revolution.
The ability of the scientists to engender public trust in 1975—regarding both
the social responsibility that scientists would exercise and their approach to the
particular topic—was seen by many conferees as a key accomplishment of
Asilomar 2. The meeting was credited with elevating the field and accelerating
the development of the science. The promise of responsible stewardship assured
young scientists that this was a field with a future and that it was safe to enter it.
One consequence of the public confidence that scientists enjoyed was Con-
gress’ willingness not to pronounce on these issues. Instead,scientists at Asilomar
developed, and the RAC implemented, flexible policies that could be adapted
over time to new understandings of the risks involved. In his keynote address,
Fredrickson articulated the reigning view that thwarting legislation was a very
positive effect of the Asilomar meeting. In entertaining “what if”scenarios, some
conferees conjectured that had there not been a Gordon conference and Asilo-
mar meeting, DNA research would have become a major public policy issue
with congressional intervention. Europeans in particular reminded the group,
however, that legislative involvement with its public input can be advantageous,
even if clumsy, at times.Local ordinances in Cambridge,Massachusetts,and other
American cities may even have fostered commercial investment in the field by
clarifying the rules of engagement.
The control that scientists would ultimately be able to exert over how the risks
were to be defined and controlled depended on the public’s perception of the
new technology as well as their trust of scientists.And over the past 25 years, the
media has become a major influence in shaping public attitudes about the bene-
fit and risks of genetic technologies. Although initial press coverage after Asilomar
2 focused on the technical and scientific risks that were the subject of the meet-
ing, coverage soon expanded to broader and more controversial social concerns,
and the media coverage itself became part of the controversy.
Some scientists at the time were highly critical of coverage that they felt gave
credence to alarming (and unrealistic) scenarios and therefore threatened public
support of genetic research. In his keynote address on press coverage of scientific
risks, New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade (who had been at Asilomar
2) noted that reporters write what they hear from credible sources. He argued
that the media had a responsibility to include the range of positions on recombi-
nant DNA research, including dire warnings that in hindsight proved to be exag-
gerated. His comments, however, invited reflection on how the media might have
done a better job of helping readers put the varied viewpoints in 1975 into some
kind of context.
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Alexander M. Capron and Renie Schapiro
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
With the public now both more engaged and more skeptical, the social and
ethical issues no longer sequestered, and the commercial context of the research
more glaring, is the Asilomar model still appropriate? In light of the accom-
plishments and shortcomings of Asilomar 2, the Asilomar 3 meeting considered
three contemporary scientific controversies—genetically modified organisms,
genomics, and somatic and germline gene therapy—to test the utility of an
Asilomar-style process and to look at what other processes have been used.What
if an Asilomar conference had been convened to address these issues? Would such
an approach work today?
The consensus of the group was that an Asilomar meeting would not be an
effective means for addressing these controversies today, for several reasons. First,
conferees agreed that it is too late. Deeply held views are already entrenched.As
Berg noted, we are now dealing with chronic issues, in contrast to the just-
emerging or acute safety concerns of Asilomar 2.
The controversies are also entangled in diverse, complicated, and personalized
concepts of risk that go well beyond the taxonomy of hazards that scientists can
address. Furthermore, the public may be less tolerant of risk today. In the wake
of scares such as mad cow disease in Europe, additional uncertainties about the
food supply brought about by new technologies may represent “the last straw”
for consumer tolerance.
Considerable discussion at the conference focussed on public perceptions of
acceptable risks or balances between benefits and risks. A new technology typi-
cally generates public unease or suspicion, but as its benefits become apparent
acceptance usually follows. This has occurred with medical products, such as
genetically engineered insulin; patients become advocates for the science and
tolerant of the risks because they can see the benefits. With the introduction of
genetically modified foods like BT corn, however, many users see the benefits
accruing primarily to the corporations that create the crops and perhaps to the
farmers who grow them. These consumers are, therefore, less tolerant of risks
they might assume in eating the food.
One policy approach to the potential dangers of a new technology is to adopt
the “precautionary principle,” as has occurred in Europe. One interpretation of
this principle is that a new technology is assumed to have risks and must be
shown to be risk-free before it can be pursued. But a risk-free standard is both
elusive and inconsistent with the standards we apply to other new developments
in the world.An alternative interpretation of the precautionary principle would
be requiring that risks be identified along with a showing of safety. The safety
standard is commonly involved in screening new technologies or products—in
premarket approval of drugs, for example—and aims to achieve an acceptable
balance between benefits and risks. Some participants, however, underscored the
impossibility of quantifying the theoretical risks and unpredictable long-term
environmental impacts of genetically modified foods as some critics seem to
demand.
Remember Asilomar?
spring 2001 • volume 44, number 2 167
The term risk, however, may not even always reflect concern about specific
hazards that can be sorted out as the biohazards were at the 1975 meeting.
Instead, risk sometimes seems to be a proxy for a generalized unease about
change.Willy de Greef from Switzerland noted that many of the concerns about
the long-term effects of genetically modified organisms on the environment
stem from a deep desire not to alter the environment as it exists today. But with
the environment constantly changing, that is an arbitrary starting point, he
argued. The question then becomes, is the risk at issue a risk of actual damage,
or is it in reality a risk of change?
While there was agreement that it is now too late for an Asilomar-type
process to address genetically modified organisms, such a meeting early on might
have been of some benefit. However, some critics of developments in the field
doubted whether the companies involved would have been able to garner pub-
lic trust. This suspicion of corporate self-interest is the flip side of the success of
Asilomar, where scientists reinforced their existing image (as searchers for truth,
rather than as self-interested entrepreneurs) by acting responsibly in the public
interest.Yet today, with commercial interests so deeply embedded in the field,
generating actual or perceived conflicts of interests for scientists, the public is no
longer so willing to trust their motivations. It is difficult to imagine how an
unbiased group of scientists could be convened today to consider genetic tech-
nologies or be counted on to speak out in the public interest if they have alle-
giances to commercial interests as well. Even if they ended by urging strong
restraints on the use of a new development in biotechnology, their cautions
would be suspected—if not by the public, then by other scientists—of arising
from the scientists’ being devoted to other forms of technology, in competition
with those that they disfavored.
The near-term promise of gene therapy has been overhyped, in part bcause
companies have an interest in creating excitement and expectations that will bol-
ster their financial standing and have learned how to get their message to the pub-
lic.With their own commercial ties, scientists are not necessarily in a position to
counter those messages. For some, “Asilomar” came to mean the willingness of
scientists to openly confront potential scientific hazards, and several conferees
were critical of scientists today for failing to voice concerns about new tech-
nologies, particularly gene therapy. The issue was of particular significance in light
of the death of Jesse Gelsinger in a gene therapy experiment at the University of
Pennsylvania only months earlier. Many scientists knew that the adenovirus vec-
tors used in that experiment could cause fatal immune reactions, conferees noted,
and yet scientists failed to stand up at meetings and raise those concerns.
Similarly, over the past 25 years the line between the research-academic com-
munity and the private world working on genomics has, as geneticist Michael
Kaback noted, become “heavily blurred.” Many academic researchers hold
equity positions, patent rights, and stock options in biotech companies, and there
is now a great rush from genetic discovery to patent application, venture capital
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Alexander M. Capron and Renie Schapiro
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
development, company formation, and public stock offering.This not only has
implications for the education of the general public and informed consent of
patients and research subjects, but can also discourage the search for genetic tests
and therapies with less commercial value.
Despite the dramatic changes of the last 25 years that would probably make
replicating the historic Asilomar conference impossible, conferees found much
to admire about that meeting and its enduring legacy. An Asilomar process might
still benefit selected technologies—germline engineering and xenotransplanta-
tion were suggested as candidates.And there was also widespread agreement that
the Asilomar process offers a precedent for socially responsible behavior for
researchers.The core of that precedent was the willingness of researchers to eval-
uate and modify their own work because of its impact on others. In the words
of Princeton President Harold Shapiro, who chairs the National Bioethics
Advisory Committee, a group of scientists were willing “to reflect on how their
work affected other people’s lives.” Asilomar was unique and should be cele-
brated, he said to the nods of others, because scientists “gave other people’s per-
spectives some standing.”
Remember Asilomar?
spring 2001 • volume 44, number 2 169
