Nature is running a nice (so far) series of articles on 'Meetings that changed the world'. SCAMPS didn't make it this time, but the competition is a little stiff - like foundation of CERN, Human Genome Project and a few other trifling things. Anyway this week was about the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA technology - something I'd read about with interest before and was reminded of today.

In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit, and promptly escaped to the Los Angeles underground. One year later, a crack unit of pioneering molecular biologists found that DNA cut with restriction enzymes could be stuck back together in different combinations. This created the field of genetic engineering in Nobel-winning* fashion. As with many discoveries in molecular biology, there were concerns over safety and ethics. What's interesting in this case is that some of the leading scientists in the field actually called for the work to be stopped until the issues had been debated. Even more amazingly, it actually happened. A conference was held within a year of the moratorium, and a consensus was reached that the human race probably wouldn't be devoured by a man-made virus if certain precautions were observed, and research resumed.

I suppose something slightly similar and recent is the addressing of 'will the world end?' questions surrounding CERN. I still think the genetic engineering must have been scarier at the time, with a relatively primitive knowledge of how genes work, and really not knowing what would happen if you shoved some new genes into an oncogenic virus. As someone educated recently in biology, it's hard to really imagine the discoveries and atmosphere leading up to the conference though.

You have to respect the foresight and bravery of these scientists in throwing the future of their research into public debate, recognising that the field would be better served and secured by reaching a public consensus. In the article today, one of them (Paul Berg) reaches some slightly depressing conclusions about whether or not it could happen today, which I'm inclined to agree with. He cites commercial interests as well as unresolvable ethical issues with todays new discoveries - you might also add sensational and inaccurate media reporting (15% of delegates at Asilomar were reporters) as well as competition between scientists in fast-moving fields (can you imagine someone calling a halt to all experimentation in their own, super-hot, research area - and people doing so?). I'm sounding like a grumbling old man so I'll stop short of suggesting things were better in the 1970s - but at least we could have called the A-Team.

Article: Nature 455:290-1

Asilomar Conclusions in PNAS, 1975: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid...

And because it's great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIfuaUTH9Y4

* Strictly speaking, the discovery of restriction enzymes won the Prize.