Medicine: The Andromeda Fear

Soon after Britain's Dr. Douglas Bevis (see story above) abruptly quit his work on fertilization-implantation techniques, eleven eminent U.S. investigators, including one Nobel laureate, Dr. James D. Watson, declared that they are halting certain experiments in genetic manipulation of bacteria. Their reason: fear that if they do not stop, they may inadvertently loose upon the world new forms of life—semisynthetic organisms that could cause epidemics, or resist control by antibiotics, or increase the incidence of cancer.

The researchers tried to avoid the horrific words biological warfare, but the possibility that their work might be...

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