te Deru

In an editorial in the August 11 issue, "Will Society Be Prepared",
Dr. Marshall W. Nirenberg wrote about the prospects of molecular genetics:

"Cells will be programmed with synthetic messages within 25

years, and when man.becomes capable of programming his own

cells, he must refrain fron doing so until he has sufficient

wisdom to use this knowledge for the benefit of mankind."

No subject of policy is more important than this, and it deserves
the most critical debate. There is some danger that, whether so intended
or not, Nirenberg's language could generate public misunderstandings that
might undercut the very research needed to reach sufficient wisdom.

His underlying concern, which I share, is for the use of biological
control by a malevolent government to the peril of individual freedom.

As Hitler's race policy illustrated only too well the States access to
forcéable compulsion already gives it the power of genoside.

Presumably we have to be even more concerned about subtler mistakes.
A well-intentioned government might impose rash commitments for the sake
of short-run advantages. Plainly we must be very sensitive about innova-
tions that, once introduced, constituted irreversible evolutionary deviations.

However, in reading Nirenberg’s editorial, we should emphasize the
distinction between evolutionary deviation and euphenics, i.e., the
repropraiming of somatic cells and the modification of development.
"Message" does carry a strong connotation of RNA messengers with somatic
effects. To interdict such personal uses of messages would be hard to
justify without a prohibition on all new medicine, especially such inter-

ventions as the use of hormones. If only germinal messages are meant, we
 

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have other prospects to worry about toe, The manipulation of germ cells

for genetic surgery would almost certainly be preceded by techniques for
clonal propagation and for chromosome manipulations in human beings,which

would already have the most cogent evolutionary implications.

Human culture - as Mug/Ller has pointed out - is already a major

commitment of individual development to formative influences decided by

the community. Our educational systems are certainly a form of psychological

engineering scareély different in fundamental principle from the biological

interventions that our knowledge of nucleic acids is likely to bring about.
eal

In point of fact, we already practige biological engineering on a rather

large scale by use of live viruses in mass immunization campaigns. While
these are of indubitable value for preventing serious diseases, their-pkobal

impact on the development of human beings of a wide range of genotypes is

hard to aggess at our present stage of wisdom. Crude virus preparations
such as are in common use at the present time are also vulnerable to
frightful mishaps of contamination and misidentification. Live viruses

are themselves genetic messages used for the purpose of programming human

cells for the synthesis of immunizing virus antigens. Dr. Nirenberg's

cautions are just as relevant to considerations of contemporary policy as

they are for the ever-widening applications of molecular biology in the
near future.

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

Stanford University School of Medicine

Our main concern must be to maximize the role of individual decision.

This could be defeated by overenthusiastic policing against personal initiative

and experimentation es well as by premature positive measures imposed by the State.