One of these was a letter to the then-president of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Philip Handler, dated July 24, 1976. This was right in the middle of the controversy over recombinant DNA research; the NIH had just published its guidelines for recombinant DNA research conducted with federal money. The author of the letter was Dr. L. Douglas DeNike, a Los Angeles clinical psychologist. He urged Handler to do something to tighten up the recombinant DNA research guidelines, “since they are manifestly inadequate at present…If logic is still operative in human affairs, the guidelines must be construed as an attempt to appease political forces by ignoring natural law. Nature bats last.” DeNike thought that the guidelines evidenced a naive view of what might go wrong in the lab: “The question of malevolent preparation and/or release of dangerous recombinants is ignored in the guidelines.” He was apparently worried that dangerous material would be stolen and released, arguing that “anything that can be stolen is stolen, even” radioactive material. DeNike closed with an appeal to Handler to step in: “until Congress acts, your good offices may be among our very few defenses against unknowns of scarcely fathomable proportions.”1
In the enclosed flier, entitled “The Menace of Uncontrolled ‘Recombinant DNA’ Research,” DeNike outlined the doomsday scenario that he saw as an inevitable consequence of allowing recombinant DNA research. He argues that “it is recognized that even a single small release of dangerous novel germs could introduce a permanent menace into the biosphere.” The passive voice here raises a question — recognized by whom? Where was DeNike getting this information? A few sentences down there is an indication of the source, when he explains that “the research will revolve around presumably ‘weakened’ strains of E. coli, a bacterium which normally inhabits the human gut and of which some types cause human disease. Responsible biologists have called for use of a different host.” Who are these “responsible biologists”? DeNike’s list of references at the bottom of the page includes a Public Interest Report by the Federation of American Scientists that described the new research in a way that was practically guaranteed to scare the reader, as well as a letter to Science by biochemist Erwin Chargaff, who argued against recombinant DNA research in dramatic terms and made a case for the dangers of using E. coli. Chargaff saw no reason for this research to be done at all and dismissed the benefits as “empty promises.” Scientists engaged in this type of research were like “Dr. Frankenstein…producing his little biological monsters.”2 It is likely that DeNike had been influenced by Chargaff’s letter and the material in the FAS Public Interest Report.
Of course, DeNike was not the only person to object that recombinant DNA research was highly dangerous and that scientists could not be trusted to act responsibly in terms of what research they chose to do and how they did it. Neither was he the only one to send out an open memorandum or letter to try to galvanize public support against it. A group of scientists affiliated with MIT, Boston University, Harvard and the Harvard Medical School, for example, had made a similar argument in an open letter to the participants of the Asilomar conference in which they argued that there was no practical benefit for ordinary people to be derived from recombinant DNA experiments, but there was plenty of risk.3
But what is interesting about DeNike’s flier is that a look at the references at the bottom suggests that wherever he was getting the sense that catastrophe was at hand, it wasn’t necessarily from the articles in Science that he referenced (with the exception of Chargaff’s letter). Most of what he cited was relatively balanced reporting — much of it by veteran science reporter Nicholas Wade — that described the concerns of some scientists about the potential hazards of recombinant DNA research but did so without sensationalism or scare-mongering. DeNike’s citation list also included letters and essays that argued in favor of going forward with recombinant DNA research, including a letter to Science from physicist Freeman Dyson in which Dyson argued that the “possible benefits of recombinant DNA research are more likely to materialize than any of the most extreme dangers.”4 He also included a letter from biologists Maxine Singer and Paul Berg in which they discussed Chargaff’s concerns and laid out why the hazard from E. coli bacteria was far more limited than he had claimed.5 All in all, if one reads the material to which DeNike was pointing his readers, one does not come away with the impression that the apocalypse is nigh.
Zinder assumed that DeNike was a crank, and he had a point — neither the tone of the flier nor the nuclear danger symbol at the top on the right do much to dispel this impression. On the other hand, suppose for a moment that he wasn’t a crank. DeNike was a clinical psychologist who as such would likely have been used to reading specialized literature on topics where there was debate among experts. In other words, he was unlikely to have been the type of reader who is completely flummoxed by complexity. More than this, when he sought information about recombinant DNA, he sought it in the pages of Science and a report from the Federation of American Scientists. He didn’t seem to have a fundamental distrust of science and scientists — if he had, it’s unlikely that he would have directed his concerns about recombinant DNA to the president of the National Academy of Sciences. So why was it that someone could read, and cite, balanced and informative material on recombinant DNA research and nevertheless come to the conclusion that the danger was immediate and apocalyptic?
It’s hard to answer this question with respect to a single individual without more information about his personality, experiences and background. However, the fact that DeNike was not alone in his assessment suggests that the idea of genetic tinkering triggered a reaction in many people that was not entirely anchored in the concrete facts of the debate. Opponents of genetic engineering, whether we’re talking bacteria or trees, often bring up the idea of natural integrity — that when you change the genome of a species, you are somehow changing its essence.6 The argument that we should not interfere with nature implies that nature is or knows what is right, and thwarting, breaking or circumventing nature’s rules is wrong.7 From there, it’s easy to assume that doing wrong, anti-nature things will lead to unpleasant consequences — that nature has laws and those that break them will be punished, in this case probably through some fiendish variety of E. coli.
What is the upshot of all this? The thing to take away from DeNike’s letter to Handler is that in a sense, the debate over the safety of recombinant DNA research wasn’t ultimately about safety and risk assessment, or at least not for everyone. Certainly people like Singer and Berg were engaged in a conversation about risk management but even some of their scientific peers, like Chargaff, were arguing in slightly different terms. Many people, like DeNike, were engaging, or attempting to engage, in a debate about the integrity of nature and the consequences of disrupting that integrity. The result was a debate that was unsatisfying for many of the participants because they were constantly talking past one another.
For anyone engaged in science communication, this is an important point to keep in mind — the people you are speaking with might be making assumptions about the nature of the conversation that are completely different from yours.
Notes
1 Norton Zinder Collection, Series: Rockefeller, Box 29, Folder: Ha-ha file, DeNike to Handler, July 24, 1976 and enclosures. Emphasis in original.
2 Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Public Interest Report 29, 4: Recombinant DNA, April 1976; Erwin Chargaff and Francine Robinson Simring, “On the dangers of genetic meddling,” Science 192, 4243 (June 4, 1976): 938, 940.
3 Sydney Brenner Collection 4/1/2, Folder: Asilomar meeting on biohazards, Jan-March, “Open letter to the Asilomar Conference on Hazards of Recombinant DNA.”
4 Freeman J. Dyson and Joseph Weizenbaum, “Costs and Benefits of Recombinant DNA Research,” Science 193, 4247 (July 2, 1976): 6, 8.
5 Maxine Singer and Paul Berg, “Recombinant DNA: NIH Guidelines,” Science 293, 4249 (July 16, 1976): 186-188.
6 Evelyn Brister, “Philosopher’s corner: genome fidelity and the American chestnut,” Issues in Science and Technology 33, 4 (Summer 2017): 41-42.
7 Emy Lucassen, “The ethics of genetic engineering,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 13, 1 (1996): 53.