(3 of 10)
Brushing off Chargaffs fears of violating "evolutionary wisdom," Molecular Biologist Stanley Cohen, at the Stanford University School of Medicine, notes that man has been intervening in the natural order for centuries—by breeding animals and cultivating hybrid plants and, more recently, by the use of vaccines and antibiotics. With undisguised sarcasm, Cohen adds that it was Chargaffs "evolutionary wisdom that gave us the gene combinations for bubonic plague, smallpox, yellow fever, typhoid, polio and cancer."
The DNA furor has already intruded on the free exchange of information so vital to scientists. Longtime associates are no longer talking to each other. Fearful of losing out on tenure or research grants by taking the "wrong" stand on the issue, some junior researchers are lapsing into monklike silence. At Harvard, at least one graduate student has been disowned by her thesis adviser for getting into the fray. Says Microbiologist Richard Goldstein of the Harvard Medical School: "The level of animosity is unbelievable. There have been character assassinations left and right." Sometimes the argument has sounded like a replay of old Vietnik protests. At a forum of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington last month, unruly opponents of genetic research, chanting "We shall not be cloned," took over the stage and unfurled a banner reading: WE WILL CREATE THE PERFECT RACE—ADOLF HITLER.
Scientists clearly do not have any diabolical intent, but their emotional and unusually public debate over DNA has made ordinary citizens sit up and take notice. Newspaper and magazine articles have carried such chilling headlines as: NEW STRAINS OF LIFE—OR DEATH, SCIENCE THAT FRIGHTENS SCIENTISTS and MAN-MADE BACTERIA COULD RAVAGE EARTH. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) produced a special hour-long show, "The Gene Engineers," for its Nova series. Taking the genetics fuss as his cue, Columnist Russell Baker recently wrote of a plan by depilatory makers to combine the genes of man and ape. Their goal: to produce more hirsute customers.
Art Buchwald also got into the act. He described a visit to a futuristic "people" lab, where he asks the white-coated salesman if there have been any accidents. Yes, the salesman replies. "Someone once accidentally mixed the genes of Jack the Ripper with a donkey ..." "What was the result?" "We reproduced Idi Amin." Hollywood, too, is aware of the box office value of converting re-engineered cells into celluloid. In the new film, Demon Seed, a scientist's wife (Julie Christie) is "ravished" by his supersmart computer, which somehow manages to combine its "genes" with hers. The fruit of that union: an offspring that appears at first to be—well, a miniature knight in armor.