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Up to this point, little news of these developments had passed outside the tightly knit community of molecular biologists. Any reports that did appear were in scientific journals, in a language virtually incomprehensible to laymen. But as molecular biologists scrambled to isolate other useful plasmids and enzymes for recombinant work, it became increasingly clear to Berg, Cohen and others that the emerging science needed some controls—at least until the risks, if any, were explored. Nowhere was this more apparent than at a private meeting of some 140 leading molecular biologists in New Hampshire during the summer of 1973. When Cohen described his latest work, the scientists were electrified. As the meeting's cochairman, Maxine Singer, a DNA specialist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recalls: "Here was someone talking about putting any two kinds of DNA together." Before the meeting broke up, the scientists voted to ask the National Academy of Sciences to examine the new technique for risks. They also agreed to voice their concern in a public letter to Science, the foremost U.S. science journal.
The academy bounced the problem right back to the molecular biologists by forming an investigatory committee and choosing Berg as its head. As far as Berg and Cohen were concerned, the action came none too soon. Some of the requests for plasmids had been sent by scientists planning precisely the same type of tumor virus implant that Berg had voluntarily forsworn two years earlier. "I was really shocked," Berg recalls. At a meeting of his special committee at M.I.T. in April 1974, the other members promptly agreed to a highly unusual move. They asked all researchers to honor a temporary ban on certain types of recombinant DNA experiments deemed potentially the most dangerous: those involving animal tumor viruses, and those increasing drug resistance or toxicity in bacteria. This time they published their appeal in both Science and the British journal Nature. Not since 1939—when a handful of physicists asked their colleagues to stop publishing atomic data to prevent the information from falling into German hands—had scientists tried such self-policing.
The moratorium, however, was only a stopgap. In February 1975, at Berg's invitation, 134 scientists, including many leading molecular biologists, plus a handful of lawyers and 18 interested reporters, assembled at the picturesque Asilomar retreat among the pines and redwoods of California's Monterey Peninsula. The serenity of the setting was shattered by four lawyers, led by Daniel Singer, Maxine's husband, who lectured the scientists on their legal responsibilities. If an accident did occur during recombinant work, they pointed out, a technician might sue the lab chief. And if a dangerous bug escaped and infected people outside, the lawyers warned, the situation could turn into a legal—to say nothing of a medical—disaster.