The Dna Dilemma
IN THE LAST HALF-CENTURY, HISTORY HAS TAUGHT SOME POWERFUL LESSONS about the need to look before leaping into untested and potentially hazardous technologies. All too often we have addressed such issues only after the fact. With internal-combustion automobiles and coal-fired power plants, for example, we learned quite belatedly to address the pollution they had long been creating. And we made extensive use of pesticides such as DDT until the naturalist Rachel Carson warned of their harmful effects.
Such warnings are indispensable, but if exaggerated, they can stifle valuable research and keep beneficial innovations from reaching those who need them. As in so many areas of life, relative costs and benefits always need to be balanced in deciding how to regulate a new technology. A classic example of this give-and-take occurred irr the 1970s, as molecukirjpiologists learned to work with the processes that form the very basis of life.
Within an organism, each living cell amounts to a highly complex chemical plant that operates under the control of a computer. The cell’s computer program is embodied in its genes, which are long strings of the substance known as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). A piece of DNA can be thought of as a length of magnetic tape, and sometimes quite a long one: The DNA in a human cell has the width of a molecule but would stretch to a length of some nine feet. DNA has a code, a sequence of tiny submolecules designated A, T, C, and G (for adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine). Using this code, each gene translates into the precise specification for a well-defined protein molecule. Proteins, such as enzymes, conduct the day-to-day work of a cell: obtaining energy from food, recognizing and repairing internal damage, growing and dividing to form new cells, and otherwise contributing to the operation of whatever organ the cell is part of.
These basic facts about DNA were established during the 1940s and 1950s. The genetic code was in hand by 1966. Soon after, scientists began to envision ways in which they might reprogram the DNA of simple organisms by inserting new genes, thus producing “recombinant DNA.” Between 1967 and 1971, investigators developed a biochemical tool kit to accomplish this, with the tools taking the form of specialized enzymes.
The first of these tools were the DNA ligases, discovered in 1967. They amounted to molecular Scotch tape, joining lengths of DNA together at their ends. In nature, these ligases help repair damaged DNA in cells. Another class of tools, discovered soon afterward, was the restriction enzymes. These enzymes, found in certain bacteria, were tantamount to molecular scissors and could cleave or cut a DNA molecule in specific and well-characterized ways. Restriction enzymes restrict the inflow of harmful genes into a bacterium by recognizing them and chopping them up, thereby protecting the organism from parasitic viruses.
The ethical confrontation surrounding genetic research began in 1971, when Paul Berg of the Stanford University Medical Center became the first molecular biologist to create gene-spliced DNA from different species, a feat that, along with his continued work in the field, would win him the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980. Berg joined the DNA of two viruses, a common laboratory type known as SV 40 and another called lambda phage. (A phage is a virus that preys on bacteria by injecting its own DNA into them. The new DNA then takes over the biochemical machinery of the host, which gives itself over to making many more copies of the original phage.)
Berg wanted to make duplicates of his hybrid DNA for use in subsequent experiments. To do this, he proposed to use his modified lambda phage, which contained the SV 40 genes, to infect a widely used laboratory bacterium, Escherichia coli . At this point he quickly met criticism from his colleagues, led by Robert Pollack of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
E. coli lives in the human intestine; the species name coli means “of the colon.” Scientists knew that SV 40 causes tumors in mice and can turn human cells cancerous. What would happen if E. coli cells bearing SV 40 genes escaped from Berg’s lab? Might these altered bugs cause a massive outbreak of colon cancer? Berg could not rule this out, so he abandoned that part of his research.
Soon, however, others took up where Berg had left off. During 1973 Stanley Cohen of Stanford and Herbert Boyer of the University of California introduced gene-splicing techniques that were simpler than Berg’s and had considerably broader application. Berg’s process had used a phage as a biological intermediary, which was inefficient because the phage could introduce its own unwanted genes. Cohen and Boyer found a way to insert new genes much more directly into the DNA of E. coli , with the bacterium accepting the new genes as if they had been part of its genetic complement all along. Their method made use of plasmids, small circular DNA molecules that exist in a cell separate from its chromosomes. Cohen and Boyer extracted a plasmid from a bacterial cell, inserted new DNA into the plasmid, and then reinserted it into the cell.
At first Cohen and Boyer limited themselves to transplanting genes from other bacteria. Then, to show the strength of their technique, they inserted genes from a higher animal, the African clawed frog. They verified that their E. coli cells duplicated the new frog genes along with their native genes when reproducing. They did this by showing that the bacteria also produced molecules that were characteristic of this frog.
With these successes, molecular biology could look ahead to new and highly promising vistas. Scientists could now investigate some of the deepest questions about the fundamental processes of life by deleting or adding genes to E. coli and observing the consequences. Besides yielding new insight into diseases, the technique could make it possible to turn microbes into protein factories, churning out medically useful hormones such as insulin.
These matters drew attention in June 1973, when the nation’s molecular biologists gathered in New Hampshire at their annual Gordon Research Conference. Berg and Pollack had already hosted an initial discussion on potential hazards in biological research. At the Gordon meeting, Cohen presented his work with E. coli . Then, at a special session held after the main meeting, participants talked about both the promise and the potential risks of the new genetic techniques.
The impromptu session brought broad agreement that the issue demanded closer attention. Two conference co-chairs, Maxine Singer of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dieter Soil of Yale, took the initiative in sending letters to the presidents of the National Institute of Medicine (NIM) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Summarizing recent work on gene-splicing, they wrote that “such hybrid molecules may prove hazardous to laboratory workers and to the public.” They added that many of the Gordon attendees wanted the NIM and the NAS to “establish a study committee to consider this problem and to recommend specific actions or guidelines. …”
The NAS responded by asking Berg to head the study group. His fellow panelists would include Boyer; Cohen; David Baltimore, who later became the president of Caltech; and James Watson, whose 1953 discovery (with Francis Crick) of the molecular structure of DNA had laid the groundwork for all subsequent research in the field.
These scientists expected that E. coli would continue to be the focus of molecular biologists’ work. It had been in common use for decades, it was easily grown, and it adapted readily to life in the laboratory without being virulent or requiring exceptional precautions. Indeed, so many microbiologists had worked with it that it could be described as the best-understood species in the world, man included.
In July 1974, as an interim measure, Berg’s group published a letter in the journals Science and Nature , both of which are read by scientists throughout the world. The letter proposed sharp limits on some of the most interesting areas of research. It recommended an international moratorium on transfers of genes that might promote cancer, even though the origins of cancer were a matter of great medical importance. The moratorium would also prohibit work that could enhance the ability of bacteria to produce toxins or to resist antibiotics, even though toxin production and antibiotic resistance were topics of considerable significance. More broadly, the letter urged great care with transfers of animal DNA into microbes, because long strings of DNA from such sources might contain hidden or dormant DNA common to viruses, which could spring to life and turn E. coli into a source of cancer.
Around the world, with no organized opposition, researchers agreed not to pursue such studies. Next, in February 1975, an international meeting on the subject was held in Asilomar, California. Much of the discussion dealt with technical issues. However, the attendees also listened to talks by lawyers, who spoke of potential legal liability and multimillion-dollar lawsuits.
Berg’s moratorium did not cover all gene-splicing experiments, or even most of them. It was aimed specifically at work that might turn DNA into a severe health hazard, such as by creating an E. coli strain that could produce diphtheria toxin or a pneumonia germ resistant to penicillin. The participants in the Asilomar meeting drafted some preliminary guidelines for safety. Sydney Brenner, one of the conference leaders, pointed out that a successful guideline would be one that in the future could be made weaker. He called for safety procedures so tight that no one could ever accuse the scientists of being cavalier or self-serving.
Particular concern surrounded proposals to transplant genes from birds and mammals, including humans, into bacteria. The prospect of producing tumors in this way was purely speculative. No researcher had ever done so, not even in laboratory mice that had been bred to show strong susceptibility to cancer. Still, no simple test could rule it out; elaborate and lengthy studies would have been required, involving transplants of many types of DNA segment from all interesting donor species.
The attendees at Asilomar built their guidelines around the existing protocols for safety in microbiology labs. The lowest level of protection, designated “minimal-risk” containment, merely called for such standard practices as wearing lab coats and promptly disinfecting any source of contamination. This safety level was reserved for transplants of DNA from microbes that could already exchange genes with E. coli naturally.
After that, the precautions ratcheted up sharply. A “low-risk” lab restricted access and used airfiltering safety cabinets, some of whose interiors could be reached only with built-in gloves. Such safeguards had long been adequate even when dealing with microbes that cause typhus, botulism, and cholera. At Asilomar, however, it was decided that they would accommodate only DNA from nonpathogenic microbes, plants, fishes, insects, and reptiles or amphibians. DNA from higher animals demanded even greater protection.
DNA from mammals and birds constituted a “moderate risk.” This involved more extensive use of glove boxes and reduced air pressure in the lab to ensure that any flow of air would be inward. DNA from known pathogens called for “high-risk” containment, with safeguards suitable for a military germ-warfare research center. These included air locks and specialized clothing, with exhaust air being heated to a very high temperature or passed through special filters. Besides these physical methods, the Asilomar attendees also anticipated biological containment. They called for the use of a modified strain of E. coli that was genetically enfeebled and incapable of surviving outside a laboratory. Even if any of these microbes did escape, they would quickly die.
These guidelines became the basis for a more formal set of rules that the NIH issued in June 1976. The NIH standards were even more restrictive than those of Asilomar. They defined the safety levels Pl through P4, corresponding approximately to the Asilomar report’s minimal risk through high risk. The NIH adopted a simple rule of thumb: The more closely a donor species was related to humans, the greater the risk. Even so, just as in Asilomar guidelines, the highest level of containment was reserved for particularly deadly microorganisms like anthrax bacilli and smallpox viruses. But finally, with the rules in place, most experiments could go forward, at least in principle. In practice, few research centers had the costly P3 or P4 facilities, and enfeebled strains of E. coli were not immediately available. So most investigators were effectively limited to work with DNA from amphibians, fishes, and invertebrates.
Controversy arose anyway. Since DNA was nothing less than the essence of life, gene-splicing amounted to creating new life forms. Many people worried that this came perilously close to playing God. Moreover, skeptics found it hard to imagine that scientists would design and implement laboratory safeguards strong enough to protect the public if it meant hobbling their research programs. If scientists conceded the existence of potential dangers, it was reasoned, the real hazards must be far greater than they were willing to admit. If they saw the need to introduce an enfeebled E. coli strain, this could only mean that the standard strain was too dangerous for common use. If work with primate DNA demanded facilities suitable for research on germ warfare, then bacteria carrying such genes might well have the power to wipe out entire cities.
Brenner’s approach had backfired: Adoption of the severest possible guidelines had served to inflame public fears among some people, rather than to soothe them. Gene-splicing evoked thoughts of Frankenstein and Brave New World , and as the NIH guidelines reached final form, the controversy entered the realm of public debate. This happened particularly vividly in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Cambridge, the home of Harvard University and MIT, is largely a bluecollar town. In 1976 senior faculty members at Harvard wanted to install a P3 lab within an existing campus building. The building was old and infested with cockroaches and ants, which heightened uneasiness over the proposed research. The mayor, Alfred Vellucci, liked to play to his constituents by thumbing his nose at Harvard. He was well known for having suggested that the university chop down its majestic elm trees and turn Harvard Yard into a parking lot to serve a Harvard Square that would be renamed the Piazza Leprechauna.
Mayor Vellucci learned of the proposed lab from a longtime scientific gadfly, the Nobel Prize-winning Harvard biologist George WaId, and from a local left-wing newspaper, the Phoenix . He was outraged. “They may come up with a disease that can’t be cured,” he warned. “We want to be damned sure the people of Cambridge won’t be affected by anything that would crawl out of that laboratory.” Heated and passionate public meetings were held in June and July 1976, at which Vellucci sought an outright two-year ban on DNA research. After learning that the city council lacked the necessary legal authority, he agreed to accept a voluntary three-month moratorium on P3-level research.
The council set up a citizens’ committee to make recommendations. No molecular biologists sat on the committee, but its members took their work seriously and put much effort into learning about the pertinent issues. Their report, approved by the city council in February 1977, endorsed the NIH guidelines but recommended making them even tighter. All P3 work was to use enfeebled rather than standard E. coli (by then such weakened strains were widely available). Other rules guaranteed that standard E. coli would not enter the intestines of lab workers as a contaminant, ensured that experiments would follow the NIH rules even when not funded by that institution, and mandated tests to monitor the possible survival and escape of mutant bacteria.
For the scientists of Cambridge, this conclusion gave hope that they could hold their own in a democratic debate, even when pressured by the populist Vellucci and by a knowledgeable but alarmist Wald. Unfortunately, many other cities and states were threatening to enact their own restrictions, with real teeth, and there was no guarantee that the outcome would be as well considered as in Cambridge.
Thus far, enforcement of the restrictions and guidelines had relied largely on scientists’ good faith. Berg’s 1974 moratorium had been maintained through peer pressure. The 1976 NIH guidelines rested on the authority of the NIH to terminate a grant to any researcher who failed to comply, but this sanction was less severe than it might have been, since the pharmaceutical industry had plenty of money to throw around. Now, however, a law with all the force and authority of the state was making its way through the New York legislature. Robert Pollack, who had warned Berg of DNA hazards years before, opposed this statute because it would turn the county health commissioner into “the sole arbitrator of our individual research efforts, with the power to levy a $5000/day fine if he and an investigator differed on any point of scientific procedure.” There would be no right of appeal to the NIH.
In Washington the habitually interventionist Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts held hearings on a proposed strict law that would pre-empt state and local ordinances. Scientists reacted predictably. “There are a whole bunch of regulators here who have discovered that we have been doing genetics for 30 years without permission,” an MIT biologist told Science .
Other draft bills proposed prison sentences or fines of $10,000 per day for violations. Scientists conducting DNA research were to be “strictly liable, without regard to fault”—a provision sufficiently sweeping as to shut down virtually all work on gene-splicing. One researcher who had been on Berg’s 1974 review committee, Norton Zinder, wrote in December 1977 that such bills would have “set up vast bureaucracies, cumbersome licensing, harsh penalties and tedious reporting procedures. Their rhetoric implied that scientists were guilty until proven innocent and hence the bills contained search and seizure provisions. They read like a narcotics bill.”
Leaders of the scientific community responded to the threat of harsh legislation by lobbying. The presidents of major professional groups, including the American Society for Microbiology, called for laws that would merely enact the NIH guidelines, without criminal penalties. The NAS passed a similar resolution. In June 1977, attendees at that year’s Gordon Conference signed a letter warning that new laws could “inhibit severely” their work with DNA. The letter also took a strong stand against “exaggerations of the hypothetical hazards” of this research “that go far beyond any reasoned assessment.”
The New York State law was an initial target. Zinder declared in 1977 that it was so badly drafted that its restrictions might extend to the whole field of molecular biology. Scientists failed to kill the bill while it was in the legislature, but when it reached the desk of Gov. Hugh Carey, he showed courage by vetoing it. Carey declared that any regulation of science should follow a national standard, and any law intruding on freedom of inquiry must be narrowly and precisely drawn. (In 1978 he signed a bill essentially requiring compliance with the NIH guidelines.) Significantly, his act stirred no firestorm of public outrage. Voters were concerned but not panic-stricken. This lack of political consequences persuaded Kennedy to withdraw support for his bill in September, and Congress soon tabled its other DNA bills as well.
By then, research results were suggesting that the NIH guidelines could actually be weakened considerably with no loss of safety. An important contribution to the debate came from Roy Curtiss of the University of Alabama. He had envisioned particularly severe hazards from gene-splicing and had called for Berg’s moratorium to be extended to virtually all such experiments. But in April 1977 he declared that he had changed his mind, since numerous gene-splicing experiments had been conducted with no apparent harm.
“I have gradually come to the realization that the introduction of foreign DNA into [ E. coli ] offers no danger whatsoever to any human being,” he wrote, adding that “the arrival of this conclusion has been somewhat painful and with reluctance because it is contrary to my past ‘feelings’ about the biohazards.” An MIT researcher later commented, “The Curtiss paper has had a big impact because he started from the other side and is a very credible guy.”
That June, 50 invited specialists in E. coli gathered at a workshop in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Following their two-day meeting, they concluded unanimously that this bacterium could not be turned into a dangerous pathogen through inserts of DNA. Concern had centered on the prospect that an experiment that had been presumed safe would inadvertently create a dangerous mutant. But Berg and Cohen noted that “during the past four years, more than 200 scientific investigations involving recombinant DNA have been published, and literally hundreds of billions of bacteria containing a wide variety of recombinant DNA molecules have been grown and studied, with no indication of harm to humans or to the environment. Despite extensive efforts to detect some evidence of actual or potential hazard, none has been found.”
Even in its standard lab version, E. coli had been so weakened through long adaptation to life in laboratories that it could not colonize human or animal digestive tracts. Enfeebled strains prepared by Curtiss were safer still; even if they somehow managed to escape from a lab, they would simply self-destruct. The addition of outside genes made these germs weaker still.
Environmental groups, however, continued to urge a tightening of the rules. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) suggested scrapping the NIH guidelines and simply rating experiments as Prohibited, Very Hazardous, and Hazardous. Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of DNA research unless it was accompanied by a laborious environmental impact statement.
The environmentalists met strong opposition from their own scientific advisers. Lewis Thomas, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, resigned from the Friends of the Earth advisory council, citing his “flat disagreement on straightforward scientific grounds” with its “rigid position.” Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb , attacked the same organization for its concern with “imagined risks.” René Dubos, another well-known author and a trustee of the NRDC, wrote that the group had “no competence” in offering advice on DNA research and was promoting “a cause that I regard as ridiculous.”
Amid this change in the scientific climate, the NIH went forward with a major relaxation of the rules. The new guidelines, adopted early in 1979, allowed most experiments to proceed at level Pl or P2. The more stringent P3 would be reserved for DNA from sources that were pathogenic or produced toxins. Few, if any, experiments would require P4.
To further test the safety of gene-splicing, NIH staff scientists intentionally sought to create dangerous forms of E. coli . This work was so hazardous that it required both a P4 facility and the use of an enfeebled strain. They used the complete gene sequence of a virus that easily causes cancer in mice, though it was not known to infect humans.
The researchers inserted this sequence into their enfeebled E. coli , verified that the desired genes were present, and then injected their mutant germs into the mice. They found that these gene-spliced bacteria were less than one-billionth as carcinogenic as the naked virus and published the results in March 1979. With this deliberate attempt to create danger having failed, it looked less likely than ever that inadvertence could lead to monsters from the lab. Within months, the NIH responded by markedly easing procedures for compliance with the rules. Two years later it went further, virtually eliminating federal regulation of DNA research. The new rules changed mandatory restrictions into voluntary guidelines and removed penalties for violations.
These developments encouraged venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who were working to launch a gene-splicing industry in Silicon Valley. Herbert Boyer, who had been among the first to insert genes directly into E. coli , was in the forefront of this new activity. In 1976 he cofounded the firm of Genentech. Its goal was to turn gene-splicing into a practical technology by using modified E. coli to produce substances that would be useful in medicine.
A series of research successes quickly gained the new company a strong reputation. In 1977 Boyer and his colleagues announced a process to produce the hormone somatostatin, which acts in the body to regulate the secretion of other hormones. In 1978 Genentech came out with a process for human insulin, a potential replacement for the insulin from cattle and pigs that diabetics had been using for decades. In 1979 the company successfully produced human growth hormone, which prevents dwarfism. The following year, it announced a process for Interferon, which had shown promise in fighting cancer. Also in 1980, it went public by issuing stock on the New York Stock Exchange.
The first public sale came on October 14, when it opened at $35 a share. Twenty minutes later it was at $89; it closed the day’s trading at $71.25. At that moment, the value of all its stock theoretically totaled $529 million, one-twelfth the value of the chemical giant Du Pont. Clearly, brokers were bullish on bacteria. Wall Street had awaited Genentech’s debut with eagerness, but even veteran traders were astonished by this performance.
A year later, the University of Maryland set up the nation’s first program to train genetic engineers, and Genentech announced another success, with a vaccine against hoof-andmouth disease in cattle. Science reported in April 1981 that since October 1979 the NIH had approved 18 proposals to apply recombinant DNA on a commercial scale. The firms included such pharmaceutical giants as Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough, and Hoffmann-La Roche.
The realm of gene-splicing expanded further during the 1980s. Another startup firm, Amgen, introduced a protein called Epogen that controlled anemia. Epogen went on to become the most successful product in the biotechnology industry. A long-established medical firm, Merck Laboratories, along with the Chiron corporation, pushed the field into the domain of human vaccines with Recombivax HB, which protected against a form of hepatitis.
The new successes brought new controversies. A case in point was bovine growth hormone, which raised hackles among consumers. It stimulated milk production in cows, but it was like giving steroids to athletes, and people were frightened by the specter of hormones in their hamburgers. Dairy farmers also balked, for fear that small numbers of supercows would glut the market with milk.
These bovine hormones continued to come from genespliced E. coli strains. During the 1990s, several firms went a step farther, splicing genes into the seeds of food crops. This triggered more controversy. Monsanto, for example, has sold large quantities of a genetically altered soybean seed called Roundup Ready. It confers resistance to Monsanto’s own Roundup herbicide, allowing farmers to spray at will without damaging their crops. This encourages them to use more Roundup, and environmentalists have complained that the result is more pesticide residue.
A more benign pesticide, known as Bt, consists of a common soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis . The toxins it produces are a safe and effective natural insecticide and are popular with organic farmers. Monsanto and other firms have transplanted the pertinent bacterial genes into corn and cotton seeds. The resulting crops are naturally resistant to the European corn borer and the cotton bollworm, for the new genes enable them to produce their own Bt toxin. A study in Arizona has shown farmers cutting their use of chemical insecticides by 75 percent with the seeds.
Still, questions remain. Activists have made much of a 1999 experiment in which a Cornell University entomologist, John Losey, fed corn pollen containing Bt genes to monarch butterfly caterpillars. Many of the caterpillars died, raising the prospect of danger to the insect population. Other critics have asked if pests might develop resistance to Bt, forcing farmers to turn to stronger chemicals.
A sore point to some activists is a 1992 ruling by the Food and Drug Administration that gene-spliced foods don’t require labeling or tests for safety. Farmers have responded enthusiastically. Today some one-fourth of the nation’s corn is genetically altered, while 70 percent of processed food contains ingredients from transgenic corn, soybeans, and other plants. Critics have demanded, as a minimum, that gene-spliced food be so labeled. Manufacturers have resisted, declaring that consumers would wrongly infer that the foods were unsafe.
The protests have had some success. The environmental group Greenpeace has prevailed on Gerber to keep transgenic ingredients out of its baby foods. Yet the most plausible potential danger from such foods would appear to be allergies, which arise often enough from unmodified products. Even this may prove to be another conjectural hazard that fails to materialize in the real world. Some people have complained of illness after eating genetically modified corn, but scientists have been unable to show that genetically altered food was the cause.
Moreover, the prospect now exists that genetically altered crops may aid the struggle against world hunger. A pair of European scientists have crafted a modified strain of rice that produces beta carotene, a building block of vitamin A. Rice, a staple in much of the world, naturally lacks this vitamin, a deficiency of which kills more than a million children a year and blinds hundreds of thousands more. The new rice may in time prevent this.
Today, 20 years after Genentech became the darling of Wall Street, the world of recombinant DNA shows many solid achievements, but all of them have been fairly modest in scale, limited to specific ailments and not always common ones. Work with DNA has yet to produce accomplishments on a par with the antibiotics and polio vaccines of the postwar years. In agriculture, gene-spliced crops have not approached the importance of hybrid corn or of the Green Revolution, whose increased yields now feed half the world.
Nevertheless, the debate during the 1970s stands out as a fine example of democracy in action. The field of molecular biology was highly abstruse; the potential for widespread panic was high. Yet on the whole, most of the participants in the debate behaved admirably. The public stayed cool, avoiding extremes of credulity or hysteria. Congress and other government officials avoided a rush to judgment that would have treated scientists like heroin dealers. When ordinary citizens came face to face with technical issues, as on the Cambridge advisory committee, they worked seriously to learn the subjects, and their recommendations were well founded. Then, when specialists came forth with strong evidence that greatly reduced the prospect of danger, they succeeded in swaying the NIH. In turn, the agency responded with integrity, refusing to play to the galleries. In demonstrating that such a consensual process could deal fairly and effectively with even this most recondite of controversies, the nation’s DNA researchers made perhaps their greatest contribution to the nation’s well-being.
