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Opponents of the new research acknowledge its likely bounty, but fear that those benefits might be outweighed by unforeseeable risks. What would happen, they ask, if by accident or design, one variety of re-engineered E. coli proved dangerous? By escaping from the lab and multiplying, their scenario goes, it could find its way into human intestines and cause baffling diseases. Beyond any immediate danger, others say, there are vast unknowns and moral implications. Do not intervene in evolution, they warn in effect, because "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Caltech's biology chairman, Robert Sinsheimer, concludes: "Biologists have become, without wanting it, the custodians of great and terrible power. It is idle to pretend otherwise."
The scientific community is bitterly divided about the unknown risks of genetic engineering. The wrangling has been public, and traditional scientific courtesy has all but vanished. Infuriated by unreasoning opposition to the new discoveries, James Watson—who, with Francis Crick, won a Nobel Prize for determining the double-helix structure of the DNA (for deoxyribonucleic acid) molecule—has labeled the critics "kooks," "shits" and "incompetents." One of his targets is fellow Nobel Laureate George Wald, who has supported efforts to ban recombinant DNA research at Harvard and M.I.T. Wald contends that instead of trying to find the roots of cancer, for example, through genetic research, society can fight the disease more effectively by taking carcinogens out of the environment.
The concern of Caltech's Sinsheimer is partly philosophical —some might even say mystical. He fears the unpredictable consequences of breaching what he calls nature's "evolutionary barrier" between different kinds of creatures—the genetic incompatibility that in most cases prevents one species from breeding with another. In the same vein, retired Columbia Biochemist Erwin Chargaff asks: "Have we the right to counteract, irreversibly, the evolutionary wisdom of millions of years in order to satisfy the ambition and the curiosity of a few scientists?"
For every salvo from the critics, though, a return round comes from defenders of recombinant DNA research. Bernard Davis, a Harvard Medical School microbiologist, is so sure the new technique is safe that he has publicly offered to drink recombinant DNA. He insists that those who worry about infections are totally ignorant of medicine's long history of safely handling highly contagious bacteria and viruses. Nor, he says, do they understand how difficult it is for a microbe to become pathogenic. He adds: "Those who claim we are letting loose an Andromeda strain are either hysterics or are trying to wreck a whole new field of research." Less acerbically, Chemist John Abelson pointed out in last week's Science that in five years of work with recombinant DNA there has not been a single reported case of infection. The evidence so far suggests that virulent combinations of genes are highly unlikely; the host bacteria simply reject the unwanted genes or die. "Thus," he concludes, "it is probably not possible to create a strain that would overgrow the laboratory and head for the town, as depicted in movies of the 1950s."