A Common Ground For rDNA Adversaries

It’s not easy, at first sight, to discern signs of ideological harmony between biologists who are working toward the environmental dissemination of genetically altered organisms and “activists” who are deeply apprehensive about the idea. Look more closely, however, and one argument appears as a possible basis for unity: the need for far greater investment in the ecological research necessary for prudent development of this novel range of technologies. As reflected in the agenda for the First International Conference on the Release of Genetically Engineered Microorganisms (REGEM 1), which opens April 5 in Cardiff, Wales, the potential applications of organisms carrying recombinant DNA in agriculture, medicine and other domains are extremely impressive in their range and promise. Yet at least some of those rewards may be slow to accrue unless much greater effort is put into fundamental environmental studies that will provide guidance for both scientists and regulatory authorities. “It is both poignant and an irony that the extraordinary investment made over the past three decades in molecular biology research was not accompanied by proportional funding for microbial ecology and systematics,” wrote Rita Colwell, chairman of REGEM l’s scientific program committee, in the Society for General Microbiology Quarterly (vol. 15, part 1, February 1988, p. 2). “As a result, society is left with magnificent opportunities for improving the quality of human life on the one hand, but without the information needed for wise exploitation of those opportunities. Molecular microbial ecology research would have provided the necessary knowledge and poised society for the management of the risks associated with release of recombinant microorganisms into the environment.” A distinguished microbial ecologist at the Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Colwell has delivered a timely warning. She high-lights the serious mismatch between the burgeoning possibilities spawned by gene splicing and the deficient background understanding essential for the vigorous and safe exploitation of those opportunities. To take just one central issue: what is likely to be the impact of a non-indigenous microbe or plant when released into a particular eco-system? How does it compare with an indienous microbe or plant? There is an urgent need for research covering a range of activity, from past experience with introductions into alien environments to the predictive ecology of future planned releases, that will help to illuminate issues of this sort. This is something upon which many microbiologists and environmental lobbyists might well agree. Despite Colwell's anxiety about past neglect, it is not too late to take the relevant initiatives today. No doubt the deliberations at REGEM 1 will center on just how far we need go in assessing the likely behavior—and monitoring the actual behavior—of released organisms. Few if any participants will argue that we know quite enough already. Within the wide, more frenzied public debate on this issue, two subgroups will doubtless exclude themselves from any consensus or program of action. Impatiently bullish gene splicers (some of whom have already jumped the gun and fecklessly impaired public confidence by conducting unauthorized experiments) are unlikely to seek common cause with hard-line opponents who want the whole thing stopped at once. But that is no reason to overlook a possible alliance of interest. To take an analogous case, the existence of militant animal rights campaigners and their brutish tactics has not discouragedcertain antivivisection bodies with similar objectives from funding research on alternative techniques, even in the most impeccably orthodox of establishment laboratories. One thing is certain: an effective moratorium on the planned release of genetically modified microbes and plants would result in nothing whatever being learned about either the conjectural hazards or the hoped for benefits. A new Dark Age, with the stagnation of knowledge that implies, is the only sure outcome. The vast majority of disinterested but well-informed observers, including many politicians, will reject that option. Case-by-case accumulation of knowledge is the only way. But the rate at which this occurs will reflect, among other things, the resources plowed into extending the underlying ecological knowledge upon which sound forecasts can be made. Advancing that knowledge is surely an enterprise in which environmentalists and their organizations can be expected to join. A microbiologist by training, Dixon is European editor of THE SCIENTIST.

A Common Ground For rDNA Adversaries

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