Splicing life : a report on the social and ethical issues of genetic engineering with human beings / President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

  • President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research
Date:
1982
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Splicing life : a report on the social and ethical issues of genetic engineering with human beings / President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    12 Splicing Life: Chapter 1 nant DNA Advisory Committee [RAC) that had been estab- hshed the previous October to consider the Asilomar report and make recommendations. RAC issued guidelines in June 1976 (under the auspices of NIH) for the conduct of recombi¬ nant DNA experiments.® The guidelines are binding on re¬ searchers receiving Federal funds, and—the Commission was informed during this study—the private sector has complied with them voluntarily. Concern about biohazards also found its way to Capitol Hill. Several bills were introduced in the mid-1970s to regulate gene splicing research, although none passed.^ The political rhetoric of proponents and opponents escalated as the debates moved to the community level; in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and some other localities with major research institutions, concerns about the safety of recombinant DNA experiments aroused loud and often vitriolic public debates.^^ Several communities enacted ordinances restricting gene splicing re- search.^^ Meanwhile, RAC became a second generation body in which scientific members were joined by a larger representa¬ tion of public members. As a 25-member body that now meets three to four times a year, it continues to oversee implementa¬ tion of the NIH guidelines. Those restrictions have been progressively relaxed as scientists have gained experience with the new technology; for most types of experiments, the ® 41 Federal Register 27902 (July 7,1976]. In total, 16 bills related to recombinant DNA research were introduced in the 95th Congress, in addition to numerous proposed bills that were considered but never formally introduced. For a listing of the bills see National Institutes of Health, Recombinant DNA Research Volume 2, Documents Relating to NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules June 1976- November 1977, U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, Wash¬ ington (1978). Nicholas Wade, The Ultimate Experiment, Walker and Company, New York (1977) at 127-41. The Cambridge statute incorporated by reference the RAC guide¬ lines (applying them to industry as well as universities] and estab¬ lished a Cambridge Biohazards Committee for oversight. Between 1977 and 1979 New York and Maryland and five towns, from New Jersey to California, followed the Cambridge model; in 1981 and 1982 a second wave of legislation was enacted in several communities in the Boston area addressed specifically to the commercial uses of recombi¬ nant DNA technology. Sheldon Krimsky, Local Monitoring of Biotech¬ nology: The Second Wave of Recombinant DNA Laws, 5 Recombinant DNA Technical Bull. 79 (1982]. See also Cambridge, Mass. Ordinance 955, Ordinance for the Use of Recombinant DNA Technology in the City of Cambridge (April 2, 1981]; Waltham, Mass. General Ordi¬ nances ch. 22 (1981]; Michael D. Stein, Boston Strikes Out: Local DNA Guidelines, 292 Nature 283 (1981).
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