Recombinant DNA

In college, I double majored in biology and in government, and I was looking for some way to combine them.

Way back then, I wrote my college thesis in both departments titled Recombinant DNA, the Question of Regulation.

And this was even before the federal government had the coordinated framework.

For any of your listeners who are familiar with biotech regulation in 1986, when

So thank you all for joining me.

Let's start by going back to 1975, with the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA.

And so I'm gonna ask Simon, if you can put Asilomar into context.

You can tell us what Asilomar was and what emerged from it.

And immediately after publishing the result, they published this letter expressing that they were aware this result raised questions about misuse of technology and potential misapplication of technology, particularly in a military context, and called for general discussion.

That really was the inspiration for the later Asilomar meeting that was introduced earlier.

So the Asilomar meeting comes in 1975, and the discussions that led to Asilomar and the reflections by the researchers developing recombinant DNA technology that led to and prompted Asilomar really stem from this first discussion, which brought this onto the tape.

So as I said, I joined this lab 11 years later, but the lab was very focused on social responsibility in science even 11 years later.