In West Germany, Biotechnology Faces Its Day Of Reckoning

The Bundestag is about to hand down a decision whether biotech work can continue FRANKFURT--It's not often that a country grapples publicly with its future in a key area of science and technology. But that's what is happening now in West Germany. Later this month, a plenary session of the Bundestag (the nation's parliament) will begin debating the report of a parliamentary commission, entitled Prospects and Risks of Genetic Engineering, which recommends a total ban on the release of genetically manipulated microorganisms into the environment. The results of this debate are likely to be formalized in West Germany's first comprehensive law on recombinant DNA activities, expected to be passed by the end of May. To say that West Germans are anxiously awaiting the law would be an understatement. Scientists, naturally, are worried that the government will make it impossible to continue their experiments. Restrictive regulations have already turned West Germany into one of the most difficult places in the world to do molecular biology. In fact, a new law requiring companies to release information to the public about genetic engineering processes has prompted several German industrial giants to move their labs to countries with more favorable regulatory climates. What makes this debate so unusual, however, is how deeply it reaches into all segments of German society - and how many people have an economic or emotional stake in the decisions that are made. On the side of biotechnology are powerful business and political interests. Industry worries that additional hurdles to commercial uses of genetic engineering will stifle the West German economy. The labor unions fear the loss of high-tech jobs. And many politicians are anxious to stem the trickle of scientists and company taxes to the United States before it becomes a flood. "The Federal Republic is ceasing to be a good location for biotechnology," warns Hans Albers, chairman of chemical giant BASF. On the other side of the issue is an unprecedented public mistrust of genetic engineering, a mistrust that has been fashioned into a potent political force by the environmentalist Green Party. Playing on fears that companies and scientists involved in biotechnology will unleash virulent organisms in the environment, Green politicians and their allies hope to do nothing less than ban recombinant DNA work altogether. Why the antibiotech sentiment has become so strong in West Germany is somewhat of a mystery. At least part of the current public furor is due to the radical change in attitude that has occurred toward industry and state authority in West Germany since World War II. Especially since the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, people have become weary of having to share their tight living space with an encroaching network of freeways, office buildings, and industrial plants (West Germany is a country of 60 million people shoehorned into a geographic area the size of Oregon). A growing mistrust of commerce and state regulation has emerged and has triggered public opposition to everything from chemicals and nuclear energy to the national census. But many feel that the mounting public fears against biotechnology, in particular, can be traced directly back to the horrors that took place in that country during World War II. "When you mention biotechnology in Germany, the public's thoughts are coached to leap to the question of eugenics," says U.S. Industrial Biotechnology Association president Richard Godown, who recently delivered the keynote speech at a biotechnology conference in West Germany. "The fear has been implanted [by political forces that oppose the use of genetic technologies] that biotechnology might be the first step back down that road." This fear is exacerbated by poor education. Ernst Truscheit, a research executive with Bayer Pharmaceuticals and head of the German chemical industry association's biotechnology committee, for one, claims that the inadequacy of public understanding of biotechnology in his country is unique in the world. "Unfortunately the public doesn't always understand what we are trying to do," he says. But what most disturbs scientists is how high scientific ignorance reaches into the West German government. Even Bundestag member Christa Knorr of the Green Party admits that "most members of parliament don't understand the problems involved." To take but one example, the same strict approval procedures now applied to production plants using dangerous pathogens also govern those involving only harmless yeast or Escherichia coli bacteria. "There is no logical basis for this lack of differentiation," says Truscheit. "The only explanation is politicians' fear of public opinion." Whatever the source of the public's anxieties, biotechnology has managed to arouse the sort of passionate protests reserved in the U.S. for issues like abortion. Last month, for instance, arsonists describing themselves as "angry viruses" caused more than $3,500 worth of damage to scientific equipment at a laboratory in the Technical University of Darmstadt. And plans by chemical giant Hoechst in Frankfurt to produce human insulin using recombinant DNA technology have been delayed at the hands of local environmentalist opposition. But the antibiotech forces' biggest victories have been on the front of national politics. Last September, an amendment to the country's emissions control law gave the public the right to information on all industrial genetic production processes. "This is unheard of in any other country," complains Bayer's Truscheit. And in January 1987, a parliamentary commission recommended a five-year moratorium on the release of genetically manipulated organisms into the environment. This is the report that will finally be debated during the upcoming plenary session of the Bundestag. If pressure from within Germany for speedy decisions on genetic engineering isn't enough, the government is also being goaded by actions of the European Commission. In part because of the European com-munity's unification of 1992, the commission is trying to standardize the regulation of genetic technologies among European countries. West Germany would like to take a strong stand on some specific issues - it does not agree, for instance, with EC plans to simply rubber-stamp local or national approval of new genetic production plants. But without a comprehensive law on its own books, its negotiating position in Europe is weak. So everybody wants a law, if only to bring an end to the regulatory uncertainty. But what will it say? Will it continue West Germany's slide into a biotechnology desert, or pull the country back toward a European standard? Many scientists in both industry and academia tend to fear the worst. For evidence they point to mounting legislative pressure against their work, such as the law requiring companies to make genetic engineering processes public. Another law now being considered would force labs and factories working with genetically altered microorganisms to sterilize all waste water, even if the organisms are harmless. "If this goes through, we can close our laboratories," says Ernst-L. Winnacker, professor of biological chemistry at Munich University. "Apart from such measures being unnecessary, the cost would be prohibitive." In fact, some West German companies have already expressed their pessimism about the future of biotechnology in their own country in no uncertain terms - by moving their genetic engineering operations here. In the last few months alone, Bayer has announced that it will locate a new facility in Berkeley, Calif., while BASF has said that it is going to Boston. And many scientists believe that the trend toward less biotechnology in Germany will continue. "West Germany should be able to attract U.S. companies like Merck, Sharp & Dohme and Monsanto to conduct research here," Winnacker says. "But if I were manager of such a company I would not relish sitting down with the Greens and being told that I was a criminal." But pessimists could be proven wrong. Previous West German administrations have had a history of coming to bat for science and technology. In 1981, for example, Hoechst announced that it would spend $50 million over 10 years to support molecular biology research by Howard Goodman at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The size of the German investment in another country's science galvanized the then governing coalition of Social Democrats and Free Democrats into action. It authorized the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology to offer matching funds to any company conducting joint research with West German universities or research institutes. This strategy led to a doubling of investment in biotechnology in the country. Since that time, subsequent West German administrations have taken additional steps to bridge the gap with the U.S. and Japan in exploring the scientific and commercial potential of recombinant DNA. They have carried through, for instance, on the government's 1981 commitment to create four major-scale genetic research centers in Cologne, Heidelberg, Munich, and West Berlin. Now knowledgeable sources within the government say that any kind of ban on recombinant experiments, even a temporary moratorium on release of recombinant organisms, is unlikely. In fact, the government's Central Commission for Biological Safety has already indicated that it intends to approve the request of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Cultivation Research to field-test 30,000 genetically altered petunias. If all proceeds according to plan, release of the plants is likely to occur in May - the very month by which the government hopes to have its gene legislation in place. This is not to say that discussions within the Bundestag this spring will not be heated. Wolf-Michael Catenhusen, a member of the opposition Social Democrats, vows that his party will continue to support the proposed five-year moratorium. The party will also seek a ban on experiments considered especially dangerous to human health or the environment, and will work for mandatory liability insurance for laboratories and production plants working with genetic technologies on viruses. Meanwhile, the Greens aren't backing away from their insistence on a moratorium on all uses of genetic engineering technologies. And so the present coalition administration of Free Democrats and Christian Democrats faces the formidable task of devising legislation that will protect the interests of science and industry and yet take account of the Green ticket and public anxiety. One of the individuals upon whose shoulders this responsibility rests most heavily is Gernot Schubert, an official of the Federal Ministry of Youth, Family, Women and Health, who has been responsible for drafting the preliminary guidelines for the new gene law. "The law must take account of the risks involved in working with genetic technologies, but at the same time be liberal enough that research and production with recombinant DNA technologies are not made impossible. It is exceedingly difficult to please all sides on this issue, but I will feel that we have achieved the right mix if we are criticized by everyone." Meanwhile, beneath the public furor and political debate lies the future of West German science. "If research and production go overseas," prophesies Winnacker, "the students will follow, and genetic research in Germany will suffer." Dede Williams is a science writer based in Frankfurt, West Germany,.

In West Germany, Biotechnology Faces Its Day Of Reckoning

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