As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age
by Matthew Cobb · 15 Nov 2022 · 772pp · 150,109 words
ISBNs: 9781541602854 (hardcover), 9781541602847 (e-book) E3-20221015-JV-NF-ORI CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction 1. Prelude 2. Tools 3. Biohazards 4. Asilomar 5. Politics 6. Business 7. Bio-riches 8. Frankenfood 9. Suspicion 10. Therapy 11. Editing 12. #CRISPRbabies 13. Aftermath 14. Ecocide 15. Weapons 16. Gods
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1974 and lasted about eight months while scientists argued about the issue. The culmination of this process was a conference held in February 1975, at Asilomar in California, at which scientists came up with safe ways of performing their experiments but notably refused to consider the social or political consequences of
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social issues that have dogged the last fifty years of the development and application of genetic engineering were precisely those that were ruled off the Asilomar agenda. Two key issues that shaped subsequent decades – the commercial exploitation of genetic engineering and the terrifying threat of new bioweapons made with recombinant DNA
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– were both being actively developed at the time of Asilomar but were not discussed. They were known to only a handful of privileged delegates, and no one was aware of both developments. Had there been
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bird flu virus, which they were manipulating in order to prepare for future pandemics. That self-imposed moratorium lasted about eight months and, as at Asilomar, was similarly resolved through the adoption of new safety procedures, which arguably saved us from an accidental lab-leak pandemic that would have dwarfed COVID
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‘Biohazards in Biological Research’, involved around 100 delegates (all but two of them from the United States) and took place in January 1973 at the Asilomar Conference Centre, a location habitually used by Berg’s department for its academic retreats. Situated on the California coast just north of Santa Monica, the
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the three rays of the radiation symbol – soon became widespread.19 Biohazard symbol, as designed in 1966 by Charles Baldwin of Dow Chemical. The 1973 Asilomar conference focused on procedures for dealing with existing threats, in particular SV40. The issue that had so preoccupied Pollack – the introduction of tumour virus DNA
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it was safe. This letter represented the decisive step on the road to one of the most intensively studied moments in twentieth-century biology – the Asilomar conference of February 1975 and the global debate about the regulation of recombinant DNA research that it ignited. Scores of books, PhD theses, articles and
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the period, which saw protests, furious rows, complex legal regulation and eye-popping financial speculation about potential riches from the patented products of genetic engineering. Asilomar now forms part of the mythology of how science should respond to potential dangers and is regularly invoked by scientists, politicians and historians as an
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took place, by the time that the molecular biologists met on the Californian coast in 1975, the radical steam had largely evaporated. What occurred at Asilomar was relatively staid – things might have been very different had the recombinant DNA breakthrough been made five years earlier, at the height of US protests
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biosecurity. There was no mention of military applications, of the possibility of human genetic manipulation or of the impact of commercial exploitation. The agenda for Asilomar was set. Officially released at a press conference at the Washington headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences on 18 July 1974, nearly a year
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imposing a voluntary deferral of selected types of basic biomedical research.’21 It also raised the prospect of federal intervention should the forthcoming discussions at Asilomar not prove satisfactory.22 The threat of legal restrictions on the academic freedom so prized by many US researchers was very real. In the United
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researchers and civil servants discussed the possibilities raised by cloning and recombinant DNA, but agreed that it would be prudent to wait until after the Asilomar meeting.45 This was wise. Whatever the Europeans and the British might think would ultimately prove irrelevant. The new genetic engineering had been devised in
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prove even more true of the early decades of this second molecular revolution, that of recombinant DNA. ✴ In drawing up the programme for the 1975 Asilomar meeting – officially entitled the International Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules – Berg and his fellow-organisers concentrated on allowing time to discuss the latest research and
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of stopping the research from taking place. The consequences of the potential commercial application of recombinant DNA went completely unremarked. Although the gaps in the Asilomar declaration are evident, by codifying a set of rough criteria the meeting’s attendees created a new situation, reinforcing their position as experts while at
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should be allowed to do. By deliberately sidestepping moral questions and concentrating solely on what the organisers saw as the technical issue of relative risk, Asilomar had turned the debate into one of practicalities. This omitted fundamental questions that were particularly significant to the public, such as what felt right and
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openly addressed from the beginning, maybe things would have been different. Instead, the worries and nightmares, which had not been properly explored or exorcised at Asilomar, eventually surged to the fore as the public and politicians all around the world attempted to come to terms with the new power that scientists
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themselves, the population and the environment. This disquiet was not confined to safety issues – there were also fears that the Pandora’s box opened at Asilomar would lead to legislative control over scientific research. Initially, it seemed as if those concerns were well-founded. In the United States, there was a
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technique that promised rapid innovation and potential profit at a time when the economy was slowly recovering from the worst recession in forty years. ✴ The Asilomar meeting called on the NIH – the main US federal funder of molecular biological research – to introduce safety guidelines for research that it financed (the private
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difficulty faced by the NIH was that this involved estimating the risks associated with different kinds of experiments – but as Jim Watson had heckled at Asilomar: ‘We can’t even measure the fucking risks!’2 The risks were, at best, known unknowns, and probably unknown unknowns. The same fundamental difficulty
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technical competence. In fact they were making public policy. And they were making it in private.7 Reporting this statement, Science magazine noted acerbically: ‘The Asilomar conferees may have been making policy without broad public participation, but they were hardly making it in private. Sixteen reporters were taking down every word
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version of the NIH guidelines was issued in June 1976.12 Designed to be reviewed annually, the guidelines were based on the principles established at Asilomar – some experiments were thought of as too dangerous; other experiments could be done if there was no alternative and if appropriate containment facilities were
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62 In contrast, Clifford Grobstein, who had been an opponent of recombinant DNA research, wrote: The public image of science was humanised and thereby enhanced. Asilomar is not interpreted generally as a brilliant conspiracy but as a conscientious effort by well-intentioned people who did not know what was best to
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3,000 watching online, the Washington Summit was smoothly organised and featured few pointed arguments, in marked contrast to the chaotic and amateurish squabbling of Asilomar forty years earlier. And instead of ruling out ethical and political discussions, the Washington Summit encouraged debates on societal implications, including three sessions on governance
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and a presentation from a patients’ group. Far from the worries that dominated Asilomar – fears that flowed from the potentially disastrous consequences of the new technology and the threat of heavy-handed legislative regulation – parts of the Washington meeting
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Doudna’s claim, the public became involved in debates over recombinant DNA because they were suspicious of the reassurances from the scientists that emerged from Asilomar, not because the scientists invited them in. As Parthasarathy pointed out, in contemporary debates over germline gene editing the contributions of non-scientists needed to
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, citizens must be engaged and treated as equals in the discussion.… rather than serving as a model for governing emerging science and technology, the 1975 Asilomar conference offers us an important cautionary tale. This view was echoed by Harvard academic Sheila Jasanoff and her colleagues, who explored the possibility that germline
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directed from high-cost individualised treatment to lower-cost public health interventions.34 For biologist and bioethicist Benjamin Hurlbut, the focus on safety that characterised Asilomar and afterwards had three major consequences. The public was effectively denied a role in complex and technical discussions, scientific participants presented themselves as the appropriate
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political and social questions about future benefits and threats were transformed into technical issues. This was all true, but in one respect the critics of Asilomar, like the scientists who invoked its legacy, were missing the fundamental point. They all seemed to assume that the gritty safety issues of using CRISPR
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be so, and that the fundamental questions relating to the technology were ethical, political or sociological. But whatever the restricted nature of the debate at Asilomar, the key outcome of 1975 – the adoption of clear safety protocols – was a significant step forward that was completely absent from the twenty-first-
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risks associated with this highly invasive method.… a dialogue on this topic should become an immediate high-priority issue. Perhaps, by analogy to the famous Asilomar meeting of 1975 that assessed the risks of recombinant DNA technology, a similar conference could be convened.26 Those risks did not stop them from
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were fears that scientists might create deadly and infectious life forms that could escape from the laboratory. It was because of these concerns that the Asilomar process was launched, culminating in the 1975 conference. As it became clear that recombinant bacteria and viruses could be manipulated safely, the nightmares faded
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to create terrible biological weapons. It was there from the very beginning, hiding in plain sight. ✴ On the evening of the third day of the Asilomar meeting a photocopied telegram was handed out to delegates. It was from a dissident Soviet molecular biologist, Alexander Goldfarb, whose recent request to emigrate to
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1 Goldfarb pleaded with the meeting to discuss whether such research might be used for biological warfare. His call was ignored: from the outset, the Asilomar committee had decided that there would be no discussion of ethical issues, human genetic engineering or biological warfare. The overwhelming majority of the scientists at
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, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), signed by eighty-five nations including the United States and the Soviet Union, was due to take effect. The Asilomar conference recognised the potential danger and the meeting proposed, and the NIH accepted, that research involving extremely dangerous pathogens should be forbidden, but that was
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as far as it went. Although David Baltimore stated at the opening of Asilomar that recombinant DNA ‘is possibly the most potent technology for biological warfare’, delegates could be excused for thinking that the nightmare of recombinant DNA bioweapons
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threat of weaponised genetic engineering and it would now never be developed. That turned out to be wishful thinking. Close examination of the list of Asilomar attendees reveals that the five-man Soviet delegation included three leading molecular biologists from the Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow – Alexander Bayev, Vladimir Engelhardt
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. Its role was to oversee Ferment and to ensure that the technical issues associated with the development of biological weapons ran smoothly.6 The third Asilomar attendee, Soviet Academy of Sciences member Engelhardt, was the director of the Institute of Molecular Biology, one of the main contractors for Ferment research.
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institutions, carrying out some of the deadliest research imaginable, involving the use of genetics to create highly infectious and lethal microbes. The Soviet delegation at Asilomar gave no hint of their country’s interest in using genetic engineering to create bioweapons. Instead, they behaved exactly as their Western hosts expected. During
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false passport. The information Pasechnik provided during his long debriefing alarmed both British intelligence and the CIA (the American interrogators included Nobel Prize winner and Asilomar attendee Joshua Lederberg).28 Pasechnik’s evidence, which everyone agreed was reliable, revealed both the full extent of Soviet genetic engineering of new weapons and
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matured and flourished in this atmosphere, using their brilliance and mastery of genetic engineering to carry out experiments that would have horrified the delegates at Asilomar, but which were now an accepted part of the scientific landscape. In 2002 researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reconstructed a gene called SPICE from
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Fouchier – expressed their deep alarm at the situation and adopted an immediate voluntary sixty-day ‘pause’ on gain-of-function research in H5N1 viruses (the Asilomar ‘m word’ was not mentioned). This was necessary, they argued, because ‘organizations and governments around the world need time to find the best solutions for
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opportunities and challenges that stem from the work’.95 But, as at Asilomar, the scientists’ concerns were purely technical and safety-oriented – there was no challenge to the legitimacy of such studies. Nevertheless, despite its severe limitations,
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Bayev described his work with Mirzabekov but said not one word about Biopreparat. Bayev, A. (1999), Comprehensive Biochemistry 38:439–79. iii The presence at Asilomar of a sixth, non-scientific, member of the Soviet delegation, described by Michael Rogers as ‘a charming, dapper, San Francisco vice-consul’ who could speak
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), Molecular Politics: Developing America and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972–1982 (London, University of Chicago Press), p. 149. 4 A full list of Asilomar attendees and their affiliations can be found in Fredrickson, D. S. (2000), The Recombinant DNA Controversy: A Memoir (Washington, DC, ASM), Appendix 1.1. 5
The Gene: An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee · 16 May 2016 · 824pp · 218,333 words
a small conference in California to address the growing concerns about gene-manipulation technologies. The meeting was held at the Pacific Groves Conference Center at Asilomar, a sprawling, wind-buffeted complex of buildings on the edge of the ocean near Monterey Bay, about eighty miles from Stanford. Scientists from all disciplines
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—virologists, geneticists, biochemists, microbiologists—attended. “Asilomar I,” as Berg would later call the meeting, generated enormous interest, but few recommendations. Much of the meeting focused on biosafety issues. The use of
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, smoldering in ashtrays, strewn across the lab). The student had just shrugged and continued to smoke, with the droplet of virus disintegrating into ash. The Asilomar conference produced an important book, Biohazards in Biological Research, but its larger conclusion was in the negative. As Berg described it, “What came out of
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border was casually crossed, another boundary transgressed. In biology, “being natural,” as Oscar Wilde once put it, was turning out to be “simply a pose.” Asilomar II—one of the most unusual meetings in the history of science—was organized by Berg, Baltimore, and three other scientists for February 1975. Once
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be shuttled into mammalian cells. Recognizing the profound potential and risks of this technology, a preliminary meeting had suggested a temporary moratorium on experiments. The Asilomar II meeting had been convened to deliberate on the next steps. Eventually, this second meeting would so far overshadow the first in its influence and
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scope that it would be called simply the Asilomar Conference—or just Asilomar. Tensions and tempers flared quickly on the first morning. The main issue was still the self-imposed moratorium: Should scientists be restricted in
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vastly more stringent than any rules that scientists might be willing to impose on themselves. The lawyers’ presentation, held strategically on the last day of Asilomar II, was the turning point for the entire meeting. Berg realized that the meeting should not—could not—end without formal recommendations. That evening, Baltimore
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morning, the five members of the committee worried that the proposal would be rejected. Surprisingly, it was near unanimously accepted. In the aftermath of the Asilomar Conference, several historians of science have tried to grasp the scope of the meeting by seeking an analogous moment in scientific history. There is none
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Advisory Committee on Uranium. By 1942, it would morph further into the Manhattan Project and ultimately culminate in the creation of the atomic bomb. But Asilomar was different: here, scientists were alerting themselves to the perils of their own technology and seeking to regulate and constrain their own work. Historically, scientists
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particularly wise about handling genetic technologies in the past—as the students had pointedly reminded Berg at Erice). In 1973, less than two years before Asilomar, Nixon, fed up with his scientific advisers, had vengefully scrapped the Office of Science and Technology, sending spasms of anxiety through the scientific community. Impulsive
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using the methods that they knew best: gathering data, sifting evidence, evaluating risks, making decisions under uncertainty—and quarreling relentlessly. “The most important lesson of Asilomar,” Berg said, “was to demonstrate that scientists were capable of self-governance.” Those accustomed to the “unfettered pursuit of research” would have to learn to
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fetter themselves. The second distinctive feature of Asilomar concerned the nature of communications between scientists and the public. The Einstein-Szilard letter had been deliberately shrouded in secrecy
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; Asilomar, in contrast, sought to air the concerns about gene cloning in the most public forum possible. As Berg put it, “The public’s trust was
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. . . . The deliberations, bickering, bitter accusations, wavering views, and the arrival at a consensus were widely chronicled by the reporters that attended.” A final feature of Asilomar deserves commentary—notably for its absence. While the biological risks of gene cloning were extensively discussed at the meeting, virtually no mention was made of
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genomes? The conversation that Berg had started in Sicily was never rejuvenated. Later, Berg reflected on this lacuna: “Did the organizers and participants of the Asilomar conference deliberately limit the scope of the concerns? . . . Others have been critical of the conference because it did not confront the potential misuse of the
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it was never addressed during the meeting itself. It is a theme to which we will return. In the spring of 1993, I traveled to Asilomar with Berg and a group of researchers from Stanford. I was a student in Berg’s lab then, and this was the annual retreat for
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walk through the scrub-pine groves with Marianne Dieckmann, Berg’s long-term research assistant and collaborator. Dieckmann guided me through an unorthodox tour of Asilomar, pointing out the places where the fiercest mutinies and arguments had broken out. This was an expedition through a landscape of disagreements
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. “Asilomar,” she told me, “was the most quarrelsome meeting that I have ever attended.” What did these quarrels achieve? I asked. Dieckmann paused, looking toward the
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out, leaving the beach carved in the shadows of waves. She used her toe to draw a line on the wet sand. “More than anything, Asilomar marked a transition,” she said. “The capacity to manipulate genes represented nothing short of a transformation in genetics. We had learned a new language. We
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now it was the gene that could be used to interrogate biology. We had graduated, in short, from thinking about genes, to thinking in genes. Asilomar, then, marked the crossing of these pivotal lines. It was a celebration, an appraisal, an assembly, a confrontation, a warning. It began with a speech
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, you know half. —Herb Boyer Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —Arthur C. Clarke Stan Cohen and Herb Boyer had also gone to Asilomar to debate the future of recombinant DNA. They found the conference irritating—even deflating. Boyer could not bear the infighting and the name-calling; he
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called the scientists “self-serving” and the meeting a “nightmare.” Cohen refused to sign the Asilomar agreement (although as a grantee of the NIH, he would eventually have to comply with it). Back in their own laboratories, they returned to an
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would privatize the products of biological research that had been paid for with public money, they argued. Berg also worried that the recommendations of the Asilomar Conference could not be adequately policed and enforced in private companies. To Boyer and Cohen, however, all of this seemed much ado about nothing. Their
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had sensed that recombinant DNA represented a tectonic shift in thinking about genes and heredity. He had dug up a dog-eared handbook from the Asilomar meeting, made a list of important players working on gene-cloning techniques, and had started working down the list alphabetically. Berg came before Boyer—but
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left behind in the insulin race. Dyspeptic even during the best of times, Swanson edged toward another bout of anxiety and indigestion. Ironically, it was Asilomar—the very meeting that Boyer had so vociferously disparaged—that came to their rescue. Like most university laboratories with federal funding, Gilbert’s lab at
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Harvard was bound by the Asilomar restrictions on recombinant DNA. The restrictions were especially severe because Gilbert was trying to isolate the “natural” human gene and clone it into bacterial cells
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insulin gene, building it up nucleotide by nucleotide from scratch. A synthetic gene—DNA created as a naked chemical—fell into the gray zone of Asilomar’s language and was relatively exempt. Genentech, as a privately funded company, was also relatively exempt from the federal guidelines.III The combination of factors
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, we were simply synthesizing DNA and throwing it into bacteria, none of which even required compliance with the NIH guidelines.” In the world of post-Asilomar genetics, “being natural” had turned out to be a liability. Genentech’s “office”—the glorified booth in San Francisco—was no longer adequate. Swanson began
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AIDS. Even so, the production of factor VIII from its gene broke important conceptual ground—although it was tinged with peculiar irony. The fears of Asilomar had been perfectly inverted. In the end, a “natural” pathogen had unleashed havoc on human populations. And the strange artifice of gene cloning—inserting human
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of Hope added another DNA chemist, Roberto Crea. III. Genentech’s strategy for the synthesis of insulin was also critical to its relative exemption from Asilomar’s protocols. In the human pancreas, insulin is normally synthesized as a single contiguous protein and then cut into two pieces, leaving just a narrow
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, James Watson convened perhaps the most decisive of these meetings at Cold Spring Harbor, provocatively titling it “The Molecular Biology of Homo sapiens.” As with Asilomar, the serenity of the campus—on a placid, crystalline bay, with rolling hills tipping into the water—contrasted with the fervent energy of the discussions
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31 on the far corner of the NIH campus in Bethesda. The council was chaired by Norton Zinder, the geneticist who had helped draft the Asilomar moratorium. “Today we begin,” Zinder announced. “We are initiating an unending study of human biology. Whatever it’s going to be, it will be an
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sent to the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, or RAC, a consortium set up within the NIH in the wake of the Berg recommendations of the Asilomar meeting. Known for its tough oversight, the advisory committee was the gatekeeper for all experiments that involved recombinant DNA (the committee was so notoriously obstreperous
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sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity.” In many ways, the proposed scheme of restrictions is reminiscent of the Asilomar moratorium. It seeks to limit the use of technology until the ethical, political, social, and legal implications of the technology can be ascertained. It calls
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DNA technology. The first such proteins were produced in enormous bacterial incubators under Swanson’s watchful eye. Paul Berg speaks to Maxine Singer at the Asilomar meeting in 1975, while Sydney Brenner takes notes in the background. Following the discovery of technologies to create genetic hybrids between genes (recombinant DNA) and
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. 6 (September 14, 2012): 1100–1102. Einsteins on the Beach I believe in the inalienable right: Sydney Brenner, “The influence of the press at the Asilomar Conference, 1975,” Web of Stories, http://www.webofstories.com/play/sydney.brenner/182;jsessionid=2c147f1c4222a58715e708eabd868e58. In the summer of 1972: Crotty, Ahead of the Curve
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new era”: Herbert Gottweis, Governing Molecules: The Discursive Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and the United States (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). “Asilomar I,” as Berg would later call: Details of Berg’s account of Asilomar come from conversations and interviews with Paul Berg, 1993 and 2013; and Donald S. Fredrickson
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, “Asilomar and recombinant DNA: The end of the beginning,” in Biomedical Politics, ed. Hanna, 258–92. The Asilomar conference produced an important book: Alfred Hellman, Michael Neil Oxman, and Robert Pollack, Biohazards in Biological Research (Cold Spring Harbor
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eukaryotic DNA in Escherichia coli,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 71, no. 5 (1974): 1743–47. Asilomar II—one of the most unusual: Paul Berg et al., “Summary statement of the Asilomar Conference on recombinant DNA molecules,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 72, no. 6 (1975): 1981–84
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the Curve, 108. “The new techniques, which permit”: Gottweis, Governing Molecules, 88. To mitigate the risks, the document: Berg et al., “Summary statement of the Asilomar Conference,” 1981–84. two-page letter written in August 1939: Albert Einstein, “Letter to Roosevelt, August 2, 1939,” Albert Einstein’s Letters to Franklin Delano
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, no. 5 (1973): 5. “was to demonstrate that scientists were capable”: Paul Berg, author interview, 2013. “The public’s trust was undeniably increased”: Paul Berg, “Asilomar and recombinant DNA,” Nobelprize.org, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1980/berg-article.html. “Did the organizers and participants”: Ibid. “Clone or
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Are You Fit to Marry? (film), 85 Arendt, Hannah, 124 Arieti, Silvano, 442–43 Aristotle, 22–24, 27, 70, 142 Asilomar conference (Asilomar I, 1973), California, 226–27 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA (Asilomar II, 1975), California influence of, 230, 231–32, 234–35 moratorium proposal of, 230, 477, 502 range of attendees at
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Graham, 76 Bell, John, 82, 84 Belsky, Jay, 460 Bengal, Partition of, 4–5, 493 Berg, Paul, 222, 234, 475 Asilomar I meeting on biohazards in research and, 226–27 Asilomar II recommendations on recombinant DNA from, 231–33, 237, 425 background and training of, 203–04 “Berg letter” on benefits and
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, 216, 240 beta-thalassemia, 424n Better Babies contests, 85, 344 Bickel, Alexander, 268–69 Bieber, Irving, 370–71 biochemistry, 140–41 biohazards Asilomar I meeting on, 226–27 Asilomar II recommendations on recombinant DNA and, 231, 233 Berg’s research using SV40 and, 210 Biohazards in Biological Research (Hellman, Oxman, and Pollack
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, 288, 361 initial interest in genes by, 278, 280 Bouchard, Thomas, 381, 382–83, 384 Boveri, Theodor, 92–93, 145, 267, 358 Boyer, Herb, 251 Asilomar conference and, 236, 243 background and training of, 211 bacterial gene transfer and, 228–29, 237, 242 factor VIII cloning and, 247 gene cloning and
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, 307n proteins for, 189, 196, 403n random chance for, 107 selective, at different times and in different circumstances, 177 gene cloning, 218, 220, 221, 292 Asilomar II conference (1975) on, 233 “Berg letter” on benefits and hazards of, 228 Berg’s recombinant DNA research involving, 208–09 of BRCA1 gene in
CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans
by Henry T. Greely · 22 Jan 2021
at those discussions up to the disclosure of He’s experiment, in two parts: the early discussions of recombinant DNA technology, notably at the famous Asilomar Conference, and the more focused discussions after the development of CRISPR as a genome editing system. Along the way, it takes a look at some
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of the people, “CRISPR people,” although not “CRISPR’d people,” who were involved. Asilomar and the Ethics of Recombinant DNA Before the realization that DNA was the basis for human genetic inheritance and the knowledge, with Watson and Crick
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DNA research and in organizing and running the famous 1975 Asilomar Conference on recombinant DNA at which the moratorium was discussed. And the Asilomar Conference is an essential part of this story. The Asilomar Conference, or, to give it its full name, the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules, was held on February 24
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, 25, and 26, 1975, at the Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds, an unusual unit of the California State Park system, located on the coast just south of Monterey, California (and one
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one of his postdocs. He has remained on the Caltech faculty since then. Over the years, Baltimore has taken part in various policy issues, from Asilomar to human germline genome editing, as well as cochairing the National Academies’ Committee on Science, Technology, and Law (CSTL). Baltimore is a short man who
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. Paul Berg was the chair, joined by David Baltimore, Sydney Brenner, Richard Roblin, and Maxine Singer, all eminent scientists. The result was the Asilomar Conference. What was the Asilomar Conference? It was the best of things, and it was the worst of things. Almost from before it ended, it was lauded as
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and self-interest. It has been the subject of histories, revisionist histories, and rerevisionist histories. It has been the model for other similar meetings, at Asilomar and elsewhere, though none of them achieved its fame—or infamy. It has, in short, been everything but forgotten. But, to be concrete, it actually
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doing, or planning, research in recombinant DNA but there were several government officials, 12 journalists, and four lawyers.12 The meeting was held at the Asilomar Conference Grounds, located on nine acres of land at the westernmost tip of the Monterey Peninsula, between the town of Pacific Grove to the north
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by the California State Park system. It was joined to state park–owned beach, tide pool, and dune property adjacent to it to become the Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds. The conference center was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987 (although not for hosting the
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Asilomar Conference).14 For three days in February 1975 the scientists made presentations on the science, its risks, their significance, and what could be done to
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Journal, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nature, and Rolling Stone.16 And the world was talking about recombinant DNA and about science’s effort to police itself. Asilomar does have some ironies. First, it focused on the physical safety risks of recombinant DNA research, the chance that a life-form with recombinant DNA
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it over the last several decades, at least until 2019.17 And yet the idea that this was self-regulation by Science was not wrong. Asilomar helped lead to the rejection of legislative efforts to restrict or stop recombinant DNA research, in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, city council and in the U
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and Berg was powerfully evocative for me; they had been two of the five people on the organizing committee for the Asilomar meeting. As I pointed out at the time, Asilomar had taken place in late February 1975, 40 years, less a single month, earlier.18 I took moderately detailed notes on
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and introductions, then a workshop charge and goal from Doudna and Botchan. Paul Berg and David Baltimore led a spirited discussion of the lessons of Asilomar (from the horses’ mouths, the agenda should have said). George Daley gave a wide-ranging talk on the future of somatic cell gene therapy, stem
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of focusing on human uses but specifically on human germline uses. Some, whom I am also not able to name, expressed the view that, since Asilomar and the recombinant DNA debates, Science had promised that the human germline would not be manipulated and that this was a crucial issue to confront
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.20 (The authors were listed in alphabetical order, but it did feel right to me that the alphabet made the citation start with the two Asilomar veterans, David Baltimore and Paul Berg.) That article made four recommendations: Strongly discourage, even in those countries with lax jurisdictions where it might be permitted
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, reporting that they had, with some limited success, used CRISPR to edit (nonviable) human embryos.22 This narrative should sound familiar from the discussion of Asilomar. A small group of leading researchers meets at a workshop and worries about the ethical issues raised by a new technology. They publish their concerns
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and call for, among other things, more discussion. And the next step unfolded in the same general way as the Asilomar Conference process: the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine got involved. On May 18, 2015, the presidents of the two
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in “Science,” they include some very important and well-respected scientists, such as Paul Berg, Nobel Prize winner and one of the parents of the Asilomar meeting on recombinant DNA; Emmanuelle Charpentier and Feng Zhang, two of the people viewed as among the most important inventors of CRISPR; Eric Lander, the
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6, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/crispr-patent-in-court/509579. 7. The Asilomar story has also often been told. See, for example, Friedberg, A Biography of Paul Berg; Paul Berg, “Asilomar 1975: DNA Modification Secured,” Nature 455, no. 7211 (2008): 290–291, https://doi.org/10.1038
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Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000). 12. Alexander M. Capron and Renie Schapiro, “Remember Asilomar? Reexamining Science’s Ethical and Social Responsibility,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44, no. 2 (Spring 2001), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/26038. 13. https
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://www.visitasilomar.com/discover/park-history. The Asilomar name did not come with the location but was chosen as a result of contest. A Stanford student, Helen Salisbury, coined it by combining two
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public at reasonable prices. I have been there with my wife for recreation and for conferences, including one to mark the 25th anniversary of the Asilomar meeting. See Henry T. Greely, “Human Genomics Research: New Challenges for Research Ethics,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44, no. 2: 221–229 (spring 2001
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). If you ever get the chance, go. It is gorgeous and peaceful. 15. Paul Berg, David Baltimore, Sydney Brenner, et al., “Summary Statement of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 72, no. 6 (June 1975): 1981–1984. 16. Capron and Shapiro, “Remember
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Asilomar.” Some have speculated that the journalists were included as a consequence of the Watergate scandal of the previous year and other examples of secret decision-
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charter and many new members, held its first meeting on December 5 and 6, 2019; its future is not yet clear. 18. Donald S. Frederickson, “Asilomar and Recombinant DNA: The End of the Beginning,” in Biomedical Politics, ed. Kathi Hanna (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1991). 19. And, yes, Doudna’s
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–190 registry, 189–190 American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), 266–267 Annas, George, 162 Archaea, 37, 39 Asilomar. See Asilomar Conference Asilomar Conference, 49, 53, 56–59 parallels with CRISPR discussion, 61–62, 65–66 Asilomar Conference Grounds, 57–58 Atlantic, The, 110, 157 Autosomal dominant, 226–227. See also Autosomal recessive; Mendelian
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
by Walter Isaacson · 9 Mar 2021 · 700pp · 160,604 words
’s cover story, “Atomic Age,” on the dropping of the atom bomb, Time, August 20, 1945 James Watson and Sydney Brenner at Asilomar Herbert Boyer and Paul Berg at Asilomar CHAPTER 35 Rules of the Road Utopians vs. bioconservatives For decades the idea of creating engineered humans belonged to the realm of
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thus been defined. It became the mission of many of the scientists to find a middle ground rather than let the issue become politically polarized. Asilomar In the summer of 1972, Paul Berg, who had just published his seminal paper on how to make recombinant DNA, went to the ancient clifftop
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he sipped his beer.6 The discussions led Berg to convene a group of biologists in January 1973 at the Asilomar conference center on the California coast near Monterey. Known as “Asilomar I” because it launched a process that would culminate two years later at the same conference site, the meeting focused
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.7 This led to a memorable gathering that would become famous in the annals of scientists attempting to regulate their own field: the four-day Asilomar conference of February 1975. As the migration of monarch butterflies dappled the sky, 150 biologists and doctors and lawyers from around the world, plus a
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that could come from creating new forms of genes and guarding against the threat that politicians would ban genetic engineering altogether. On both fronts, the Asilomar process was successful. They were able to chart “a prudent path forward,” an approach that Baltimore and Doudna would later replicate in the debates over
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CRISPR gene editing. The restrictions agreed to at Asilomar were accepted by universities and funding agencies worldwide. “This unique conference marked the beginning of an exceptional era for science and for the public discussion
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, a brilliant biochemist who had made key discoveries about the structure of DNA, looked back on the event as a charade. “At this Council of Asilomar there congregated the molecular bishops and church fathers from all over the world, in order to condemn the heresies of which they themselves had been
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principal perpetrators,” he said. “This was probably the first time in history that the incendiaries formed their own fire brigade.”12 Berg was right that Asilomar was a great success. It paved the way for genetic engineering to become a booming field. But Chargaff’s mocking assessment pointed to another lasting
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legacy. Asilomar became notable for what the scientists did not discuss there. Their focus was on safety. None of them addressed the big ethical question, the one
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late discussing in Sicily: How far should we go if and when methods of engineering our genes turned out to be safe? Splicing Life, 1982 Asilomar’s lack of focus on ethical issues bothered many religious leaders. That prompted a letter to President Jimmy Carter signed by the heads of three
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self-evolve,” Silver told the group. “I mean, this is an incredible concept.” He meant the word “incredible” to be a compliment. As with the Asilomar conference, one of the goals of the UCLA conference was to fend off government regulation. “The main message we need to draw is to keep
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, but that did not seem adequate to the challenge. So she harked back forty years earlier to the process that led to the February 1975 Asilomar conference, the one that had come up with the “prudent path forward” guidelines for work on recombinant DNA. She decided that the invention of CRISPR
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gene-editing tools warranted convening a similar group. Her first step was to enlist the participation of two of the key organizers of the 1975 Asilomar conference: Paul Berg, who had invented recombinant DNA, and David Baltimore, who had been involved in most of the major policy gatherings, beginning with
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Asilomar. “I felt that if we could get them both we would have a direct link to Asilomar and a stamp of credibility,” she recalls. Both agreed to participate, and the meeting was set for
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were invited, including Martin Jinek and Sam Sternberg from Doudna’s lab. The focus would be on the ethics of making inheritable genetic edits. At Asilomar the discussions had been mostly about safety, but Doudna made sure that the Napa conference tackled the moral questions: Did the premium that America put
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it would be bad to completely ban germline gene editing. The participants wanted to leave the door open. Their objective became similar to that of Asilomar: finding a path forward rather than putting on the brakes. That would become the theme of most subsequent commissions and conferences organized by scientists: it
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would happen, and the goal should be to provide prudent guidelines. David Baltimore warned of a development that made this Napa meeting different from the Asilomar one forty years earlier. “The big difference today is the creation of the biotechnology industry,” he told the group. “In 1975, there were no big
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Modification.”6 Although she was the lead writer, the names of Baltimore and Berg were listed first. The happenstance of alphabetical order caused the two Asilomar pioneers to be at the fore. The report clearly defined what was meant by “germline editing” and why crossing that threshold would be a major
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on Heritable Genome Editing.” Zhang of course signed up, as did Doudna’s erstwhile collaborator Charpentier. So did Berg, whose recombinant DNA discoveries had prompted Asilomar forty-four years earlier. “We call for a global moratorium on all clinical uses of human germline editing—that is, changing heritable DNA (in sperm
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too expressed puzzlement. Lander had tried to recruit him to sign the letter, but as with the discussion of recombinant DNA forty years earlier at Asilomar, Baltimore was more interested in finding “a prudent path forward” for what could be a lifesaving advance rather than declaring a moratorium that may be
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Stone, June 19, 1975; Michael Rogers, Biohazard (Random House, 1977); Crotty, Ahead of the Curve, 104–8; Mukherjee, The Gene, 226–30; Donald S. Fredrickson, “Asilomar and Recombinant DNA: The End of the Beginning,” in Biomedical Politics (National Academies Press, 1991); Richard Hindmarsh and Herbert Gottweis, “Recombinant Regulation: The
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Asilomar Legacy 30 Years On,” Science as Culture, Fall 2005; Daniel Gregorowius, Nikola Biller-Andorno, and Anna Deplazes-Zemp, “The Role of Scientific Self-Regulation for
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), 124. 9. Author’s interviews with James Watson and David Baltimore. 10. Paul Berg et al., “Summary Statement of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules,” PNAS, June 1975. 11. Paul Berg, “Asilomar and Recombinant DNA,” The Scientist, Mar. 18, 2002. 12. Hindmarsh and Gottweis, “Recombinant Regulation,” 301. 13. Claire Randall, Rabbi
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Apple, 358, 463 “Think Different” ad, 326, 371 Apollo program, 417 archaea, 71–73, 155 Argonne National Laboratory, 85–86 Aristotle, 464 Ashkenazi Jews, 389 Asilomar, 266, 269–73, 278, 286–88, 330, 331 Asimov, Isaac, 13 Aspen Institute, 228 Associated Press (AP), 308–10, 319, 321 AstraZeneda, 439 Atlantic, 281
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, 461 Beckinsale, Kate, 219 Beijing Review, 301 Bell Labs, 89–90, 201 Belluck, Pam, 307 Berg, Paul, 98–100, 153, 232, 287–88, 330 at Asilomar, 266, 269–73 Watson and, 271 Berkeley, University of California at, 64–65, 114, 115, 117, 397 COVID and, xiii-xv Doudna at, xiii–xv
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, 447 Bio-Revolution and Its Implications for Army Combat Capabilities, The (conference), 262–63 biotechnology, 64, 98–100, 113–15, 153, 211, 232, 461, 477 Asilomar and, 269–73 commercial development of, 288 crowdsourcing and, 256–57, 285 moral concerns about, see moral questions patents in, 232 regulation of, 270, 278
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, 446 Isaacson in trial of, 435–36, 440–41, 445–46 cowpox, 436 Crichton, Michael, 271 Crick, Francis, 20–28, 47, 166, 389, 475 at Asilomar, 269 on central dogma of biology, 44 in DNA double-helix structure discovery, xviii, 7, 11, 26–28, 29–31, 46, 51, 58, 159, 423
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and, 279, 304 genetically modified foods, 329, 478 genetic engineering, 64, 98, 100, 113, 153, 167, 172, 268, 478 American vs. European attitudes toward, 278 Asilomar and, 269–73, 330, 331 bioconservatives and, 267–69, 280 in China, 301 Kass Commission and, 280–81 moral questions concerning, see moral questions moratorium
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, 395, 397 Watson, James, 18–28, 37–39, 166, 266, 302, 333, 352, 385–94, 475, 479 on abortion, 337 art collection of, 395 at Asilomar, 270–72 Avoid Boring People, 386–87 Berg and, 271 childhood of, 18 as Cold Spring Harbor director, 37 Cold Spring Harbor’s cutting of
Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence
by Jacob Turner · 29 Oct 2018 · 688pp · 147,571 words
Regulatory Codes 4.1 The Roboethics Roadmap 4.2 The EPSRC and AHRC “Principles of Robotics” 4.3 CERNA Ethics of Robot Research 4.4 Asilomar 2017 Principles 4.5 IEEE Ethically Aligned Design 4.6 Microsoft Principles 4.7 EU Initiatives 4.8 Japanese Initiatives 4.9 Chinese Initiatives 5
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seeks to identify potential problems first before charging headlong into an attempt at laying down definitive commands. 4.4 Asilomar 2017 Principles In 1975, leading DNA researcher Paul Berg convened a conference at Asilomar Beach, California, on the dangers and potential regulation of Recombinant DNA technology.78 Around 140 people participated, including
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biologists, lawyers and doctors. The participants agreed principles for research, recommendations for the technology’s future use, and made declarations concerning prohibited experiments.79 The Asilomar 1975 Conference later came to be seen as a seminal moment not just in the regulation of DNA technology but also the public engagement with
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science.80 In January 2017, another conference was convened at Asilomar by the Future of Life Institute, a think tank which focusses on “Beneficial AI”. Much like the original Asilomar conference, Asilomar 2017 brought together more than 100 AI researchers from academia and industry, as well as
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the service of widely shared ethical ideals and for the benefit of all humanity rather than one state or organisation.83 The authors of the Asilomar Principles would probably admit that they need much further detail and specification if they were to form the basis for any eventual laws. However, the
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shortcomings in Asilomar was not so much in the content of its proposals, but in the process. The participants were hand-picked from a fairly small group of
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risks public rejection if other means of garnering legitimacy are not used alongside. Sociologist Jack Stilgoe and technology ethicist Andrew Maynard have written:The new Asilomar principles are a starting point. But they don’t dig into what is really at stake. And they lack the sophistication and inclusivity that are
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for attribution/liability Explainability/Transparency Benefits shared with all humanity Act consistently with human rights Ability to reassert human control Privacy Unbiased EPSRC/AHRC ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ CERNA ✔ ✔ Asilomar ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ IEEE EAD v2 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ Satya Nadella/Microsoft ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ (Nadella but not Microsoft) ✔ ✔ ✔ European Parliament Resolution ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ Japan Ministry of Communications ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ China White Paper ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 6 Licensing and Education Once
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is whether this is a worthwhile trade-off. Constraints are already accepted in other areas of scientific research. Many of the proposals made at the Asilomar 1975 Conference on recombinant DNA research have been adopted as either a matter of law or professional practice.144 In many countries, certain types of
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of attaching DNA from one organism to DNA of another, with the potential for creating organisms displaying traits from these multiple sources. See Paul Berg, “Asilomar and Recombinant DNA”, Official Website of the Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1980/berg-article.html, accessed 1 June 2018
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. 79Paul Berg, David Baltimore, Sydney Brenner, Richard O. Roblin III, and Maxine F. Singer. “Summary Statement of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 72, No. 6 (June 1975), 1981–1984, 1981. 80Paul Berg
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, “Asilomar and Recombinant DNA”, Official Website of the Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1980/berg-article.html, accessed 1 June 2018.
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81“A principled AI Discussion in Asilomar”, Future of Life Institute, 17 January 2017, https://futureoflife.org/2017/01/17/principled-ai-discussion-asilomar/, accessed 1 June 2018. 8290% approval from participants was required in order for a principle to be
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adopted in the final set. 83“Asilomar AI Principles”, Future of Life Institute, https://futureoflife.org/ai-principles/, accessed 1 June 2018. 84Jeffrey Ding, “Deciphering China’s AI Dream”, Governance of AI
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and Analytics Job Market?”, PWC Website, https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/data-science-and-analytics.html, accessed 1 June 2018. 144Katja Grace, “The Asilomar Conference: A Case Study in Risk Mitigation”, MIRI Research Institute, Technical Report, 2015–9 (Berkeley, CA: MIRI, 15 July 2015), 15. 145A constantly-updated database
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A Actus Reus Alibaba AlphaGo See alsoAlphaGo Zero AlphaGo Zero See alsoAlphaGo Amazon Android Fallacy Animals liability of punishment of rights of Artificial Neural Networks Asilomar 1975 Conference 2017 Conference Asimov, Isaac Auditors Autonomous vehicles Autonomous weapons Campaign to Ban Killer Robots B Baidu Bias Big Red Button. See Kill Switch
Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
by George Gilder · 16 Jul 2018 · 332pp · 93,672 words
. CHAPTER 9 Life 3.0 Among pines and dunes at the edge of a peninsula overlooking Monterey Bay stand the historic rustic stone buildings of Asilomar. Once a YWCA camp, and still without televisions or landlines in its guest rooms, this retreat is separated by an eighty-mile drive from Silicon
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Drexler, the cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, the economist Erik Brynjolfsson, and the “Singularitarian” Vernor Vinge, along with scores of other celebrity scientists.1 They gathered at Asilomar preparing to alert the world to the dire threat posed by . . . well, by themselves—Silicon Valley. Their computer technology, advanced AI, and machine learning—acclaimed
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that man need ever make, provided that it is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”3 The message of the Asilomar experts was that keeping it under control is still an unsolvable problem. When a new supreme intelligence emerges, it is hard to see how an
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sapiens came along, after all, the Neanderthals had a hard time, and virtually all animals were subdued. The lucky ones became pets, the unlucky lunch. Asilomar was unveiling an industry on the march across the second half of Kurzweil’s exponential chessboard.6 Everyone should watch out. New robotic kings would
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’s transformative brilliance could be more thrillling than the warning that your inventions threaten to attain consciousness and reduce human beings to patronized pets? The Asilomar Statement of AI Principles, signed by eight thousand scientists, representing a 97 percent consensus—including a passel of Nobel laureates and Hawking—echoed the billowy
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dominant form of life. In the face of this new revelation from Silicon Valley, I decided to consult the most experienced and sophisticated of the Asilomar attendees, Ray Kurzweil, who for the past five years has been director of engineering at Google. Despite his reputation as one of the most extreme
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seen the fruits of Kurzweil’s semantic breakthroughs in the three proposed responses underneath each new email you receive. To the more intoxicated of the Asilomar congregants, semantic search is a “super-human” capability, surpassing a search by sequence of words, which can fail if the words are not recalled exactly
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of pure strategy without differentiated pieces like chess, a computer can exhaust the solutions more efficiently than in chess, with its smaller solution space. The Asilomar eschatologists miss the difference between computing-speed and intelligence, between programmable machines and programmers. Tegmark makes the case as well as it can be made
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is in, advanced technology can rearrange it into any desired substances or objects, including power plants, computers, and advanced life forms.” Life 3.0 and Asilomar are declarations of principles for a post-human age. The conclusion is that the last significant human beings are the inventors of super-intelligent AI
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. To know that, you have to address the source code, and the source code is the ground state where human interpretation is imparted. The 2017 Asilomar conference called to mind a conference held at the same place in February 1975, at which scientists warned about the future of technology—in that
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carry out the equivalent of 10 billion years of evolution in one year.” More than four decades later, the hopes and fears of the 1975 Asilomar conference are nowhere near to coming true. The roots of nearly a half-century of frustration reach back to the meeting in Königsberg in 1930
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. . . . ” Thousands of transgenic plants have been developed with results “far from the creation or radical reconstruction of a living organism.”14 All that the first Asilomar conference managed to achieve was triggering an obtuse paranoia about “genetically modified organisms” that hinders agricultural progress around the world. That danger of paranoid politics
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is the chief peril that all the Deep Learners at the new Asilomar should have recognized. Among the Deep Learners and Google brains at the AI Asilomar was Vitalik Buterin, a twenty-three-year-old college dropout with the same etiolated, wide-eared, boy-genius
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may have understood him about as well as the mathematicians in Königsberg understood the twenty-four-year-old Gödel in 1930, though the audience at Asilomar had advance notice of the significance of Buterin’s work. Buterin succinctly described his company, Ethereum, launched in July 2015, as a “blockchain app platform
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the unknown person (or perhaps group) known as “Satoshi Nakamoto” to support his cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Buterin’s meteoric rise was such that soon after the Asilomar conference the central bank of Singapore announced that it was moving forward with an Ethereum-backed currency, and other central banks, including those of Canada
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of controlled or bounded probability comprises the subject of communications, information codes, encryption, and decryption that is the heart of bitcoin, blockchain, and Ethereum. At Asilomar, Buterin might have offered incisive recommendations for how to control the machine through the blockchain. But Tegmark does not mention him in Life 3.0
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Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 324–27 in Chapter 14: “The Dream of Asilomar.” 15. Leigh Cuen, “What Really Is Ethereum? Co-Founder Joe Lubin Explains,” International Business Times, August 24, 2017, http://www.ibtimes.com/what-really-ethereum
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Arthur, W. Brian, 1 artificial intelligence (AI), 2–4, 7, 20–21, 41–42, 66, 72–73, 89, 94–101, 104, 106–8, 191–92 Asilomar, 93–99, 105–7 Assange, Julian, 131 AT&T, 229, 233–35 Atlas Shrugged, 123 Attention Merchants, The, 235 Ayau, Manuel, 213–16 Ayre, Calvin
A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution
by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg · 15 Mar 2017
of researchers held off on attempting the experiment. Instead, Berg called for the first of what would eventually become two meetings held in the picturesque Asilomar Conference Grounds, nestled in Pacific Grove, California, on the western tip of the Monterey Peninsula. Before his research went any further, he wanted to enlist
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his fellow scientists to run a thorough cost-benefit analysis. The meeting in 1973—eventually known as Asilomar I—focused on the DNA of cancer viruses and the risks they posed; it did not directly address the new recombinant DNA experiments Berg was
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to deal with potential hazards. This last recommendation would result in the International Congress on Recombinant DNA Molecules, held back in Asilomar in February 1975. Much has been written about Asilomar II. Roughly a hundred and fifty people attended, mostly scientists but also lawyers, government officials, and members of the media. The
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that most experiments should proceed but with appropriate safeguards; namely, biological and physical barriers to contain genetically modified organisms. While such resolutions were certainly important, Asilomar II was just as consequential for the link it forged between scientists and the public. The members of the media who attended the meeting informed
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uproar and crippling restrictions, as some scientists had feared, this transparency ultimately gave rise to a consensus that allowed research to proceed with popular support. Asilomar II was not without its critics, though. The conference was invitation-only, and with just a handful of nonscientists in attendance, some argued that the
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of advancing gene-editing technologies, and I realized that the IGI was perfectly positioned to host a meeting like the ones Berg had hosted at Asilomar. But I knew we’d have to let the conversation evolve organically, not try to go from zero to sixty by holding a lengthy conference
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also coauthored the resulting paper that called for a moratorium on recombinant DNA research, and he had played a pivotal role in the discussions at Asilomar II. Paul’s and David’s attendance meant that our meeting would have a direct link to the proceedings that had served as my inspiration
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it be hosted by professional societies or national academies? How did we plan to include countries other than the United States? Would we return to Asilomar for another historic conference or pick another venue? Messages also poured in from journalists and members of the public, thanks in large part to the
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“Potential Biohazards of Recombinant DNA Molecules”: P. Berg et al., “Letter: Potential Biohazards of Recombinant DNA Molecules,” Science185 (1974): 303. Much has been written about Asilomar II: Institute of Medicine (US) Committee to Study Decision Making; K. E. Hanna, ed., Biomedical Politics (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1991); M. Rogers, Biohazard
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Sciences of the United States of America 92 (1995): 9011–13. Berg and his colleagues decided that most experiments should proceed: P. Berg et al., “Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules,” Science188 (1975): 991–94. gave rise to a consensus that allowed research to proceed with popular support: P. Berg, “Meetings
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That Changed the World: Asilomar 1975: DNA Modification Secured,” Nature 455 (2008): 290–91. the meeting failed to cast a wide enough net outside the scientific community: “After
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Asilomar,” Nature 526 (2015): 293–94. topics like biosecurity and ethics from the meeting’s agenda: S. Jasanoff, J. B. Hurlbut, and K. Saha, “CRISPR Democracy:
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the Need for Inclusive Deliberation,” Issues in Science and Technology 32 (2015). “This approach gets democracy wrong”: J. B. Hurlbut, “Limits of Responsibility: Genome Editing, Asilomar, and the Politics of Deliberation,” Hastings Center Report 45 (2015): 11–14. creation of a governmental authority known as the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee: N
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APOE gene, 231 AquAdvantage, 128–29, 130 archaea role of CRISPR in, 43–44 viruses infecting, 52 arginase, 16, 17 Armstrong, Lance, 230 Asilomar I (conference), 202–3 Asilomar II (conference), 203–4, 207 atomic bomb, 200 B bacteria, 43–44, 50, 56–57, 58 bacterial immune system, CRISPR as, 53–57
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, 200–201 need for, 125 with public, 204–5, 243, 244–45 computers, gene editing and, 112 conferences American Society for Microbiology, 70 Asilomar I, 202–3 Asilomar II, 203–4, 207 on CRISPR, 57, 84 Engineering the Human Germline, 192–93 IGI Forum on Bioethics, 206–10 International Congress on Recombinant
The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
by Ray Kurzweil · 25 Jun 2024
pandemic offers us a pale glimpse of what such a catastrophe could be like. The specter of this possibility was the impetus for the original Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA in 1975, fifteen years before the Human Genome Project was initiated.[27] It drew up a set of standards to prevent
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accidental problems and to guard against intentional ones. These “Asilomar guidelines” have been continually updated, and some of their principles are now baked into legal regulations governing the biotechnology industry.[28] There have also been
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priority. Over the past several years we have seen a concerted effort to create an ethical prescription for artificial intelligence. In 2017 I attended the Asilomar Conference on Beneficial AI, inspired by the biotechnology guidelines established at its counterpart four decades earlier.[63] Some useful principles were established there, and I
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that are undemocratic and opposed to free expression could still use advanced AI for their own objectives, even if most of the world follows the Asilomar proposals. Notably, the major military powers have not signed these guidelines—and they have historically been among the most powerful forces in promoting advanced technology
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. For example, the internet came from our Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.[64] Still, the Asilomar AI Principles provide a foundation for responsible AI development that has been shaping the field in a positive direction. Six of the document’s twenty
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itself will be largely nonbiological. So where will the human decision-making be when our own thought largely uses nonbiological systems? Some of the other Asilomar principles also leave open questions. For example, principle 7, Failure Transparency: “If an AI system causes harm, it should be possible to ascertain why.” And
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/18127430/superbugs-biotech-pathogens-biorisk-pandemic. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26 For a more in-depth case study on the Asilomar Conference and the principles it produced, see M. J. Peterson, “Asilomar Conference on Laboratory Precautions When Conducting Recombinant DNA Research—Case Summary,” International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering
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], July 25, 2016, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.06565.pdf. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 62 To read the Asilomar AI Principles in full for yourself, along with the regularly updated list of signatories, see “Asilomar AI Principles,” Future of Life Institute, 2019, https://futureoflife.org/ai-principles. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 63
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Related Networks,” Internet Society, accessed March 5, 2023, https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet-related-networks. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 64 “Asilomar AI Principles,” Future of Life Institute. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 65 “Lethal Autonomous Weapons Pledge,” Future of Life Institute, 2019, https://futureoflife.org/lethal-autonomous
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printing, 184 Turing test, 8–9, 12–13, 63–69 use of term, 13 vertical agriculture, 181–83 Asia, poverty, 138, 141 Asilomar Conference on Beneficial AI, 280, 282–83 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, 271–72 ASIMO, 101 Askell, Amanda, 48 assembly lines, 203, 204 associative memories, 38 asteroids, 34 Atari
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, 59, 209–10 replacement of, 154, 172–76 fourth bridge to radical life extension, 136, 192–93, 348n Fourth Epoch. See epochs fractals, 86 France Asilomar Principles, 280 crime, 149 education and literacy, 125, 125, 127 nuclear weapons, 269 poverty rate, 117 free market, 283 free will, 82–90 cellular automata
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–69 Tversky, Amos, 120–21 typhoid fever, 177 U uncanny valley, 100–101, 102 unconscious competence, 32 underground economy, 217–18 uniformitarianism, 39 United Kingdom Asilomar Principles, 280 crime, 149 crime rates, 118 education and literacy, 127 GDP, 114 life expectancy, 134, 136 literacy, 124, 125 nuclear weapons, 269 poverty rate
Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era
by James Barrat · 30 Sep 2013 · 294pp · 81,292 words
is set for a disaster. What can we do to prevent it? * * * Ray Kurzweil cites something called the Asilomar Guidelines as a precedent-setting example of how to deal with AGI. The Asilomar Guidelines came about some forty years ago when scientists first were confronted with the promise and peril of recombinant
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sabotage. In 1975 scientists involved in DNA research halted lab work, and convened 140 biologists, lawyers, physicians, and press at the Asilomar Conference Center near Monterey, California. The scientists at Asilomar created rules for conducting DNA-related research, most critically, an agreement to work only with bacteria that couldn’t survive outside
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inherited diseases and gene therapy treatment are today routine. In 2010, 10 percent of the world’s cropland was planted with genetically modified crops. The Asilomar Conference is seen as a victory for the scientific community, and for an open dialogue with a concerned public. And so it’s cited as
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the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence [AAAI], the leading scholarly organization for AI, held their 2009 meeting at Asilomar). Frankenstein pathogens escaping labs recalls chapter 1’s Busy Child scenario. For AGI, an open, multidisciplinary Asilomar-style conference could mitigate some sources of risk. Attendees would encourage one another to develop ideas on
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AI ethics, but that’s not the same as focusing on solutions to AI dangers. The scientists at Asilomar: Barinaga, Marcia, “Asilomar Revisited: Lessons for Today?” Science, March 3, 2000, http://www.biotech-info.net/asilomar_revisited.html (accessed October 10, 2011). 10 percent of the world’s cropland: International Service for the
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of dealing with jump from AGI to; see also intelligence explosion morality of nanotechnology and runaway Artilect War, The (de Garis) ASI, see artificial superintelligence Asilomar Guidelines ASIMO Asimov, Isaac: Three Laws of Robotics of Zeroth Law of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) asteroids Atkins, Brian and Sabine
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, see self-improvement Rackspace rational agent theory of economics recombinant DNA Reflections on Artificial Intelligence (Whitby) resource acquisition risks of artificial intelligence apoptotic systems and Asilomar Guidelines and Busy Child scenario and, see Busy Child scenario defenses against lack of dialogue about malicious AI Precautionary Principle and runaway AI Safe-AI
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scientists, was arguing for a partial moratorium on recombinant DNA research because of the potential dangers.36 In February 1975, a conference took place at Asilomar, on the edge of Monterey Bay in California, to discuss the risks associated with the new technique and above all how to minimise the dangers
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eventual outcome of this debate, the way in which this issue has been handled is in striking contrast to the self-regulation embodied by the Asilomar conference. * Berg’s 1972 paper on genetic engineering in E. coli raised the possibility of altering humans suffering from genetic diseases, by introducing a correct
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technique to ensure biosecurity.52 These responsible approaches to the potential impact of a new technique of unprecedented power are a direct descendant of the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA that so successfully guided science as it was catapulted into the new world of genetic manipulation. In 2008, Paul Berg reflected
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on the impact of the Asilomar conference: In the 33 years since Asilomar, researchers around the world have carried out countless experiments with recombinant DNA without reported incident. Many of these experiments were inconceivable in
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have profound effects on natural processes has substantially disappeared with the discovery that such exchanges occur in nature. … That said, there is a lesson in Asilomar for all of science: the best way to respond to concerns created by emerging knowledge or early-stage technologies is for scientists from publicly-funded
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Project, California Institute of Technology Archives. http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/27/1/OH_Benzer_S.pdf, 1991. Berg, P., ‘Meetings that changed the world. Asilomar 1975: DNA modification secured’, Nature, vol. 455, 2008, pp. 290–1. Berg, P. and Singer, M., George Beadle, an Uncommon Farmer: The Emergence of Genetics
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., Boyer, H. W. et al., ‘Potential biohazards of recombinant DNA molecules’, Science, vol. 185, 1974, p. 303. Berg, P., Baltimore, D., Brenner, S. et al., ‘Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA molecules’, Science, vol. 188, 1975, pp. 991–4. Berget, S. M., Moore, C. and Sharp, P. A., ‘Spliced segments at the
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up in Marshall Nirenberg’s laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, when news came through of his 1969 Nobel Prize. 30. Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA, 1975. Left to right: Maxine Singer, Norton Zinder, Sydney Brenner and Paul Berg. The possibility of using CRISPR to change the
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human germ line has recently led to calls for a ‘new Asilomar’ to debate the ethical and technical questions involved. NOTES Chapter 1 1.Wood and Orel (2001), p. 258; see also Cobb (2006a), Poczai et al
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, 293, 316 Apter, Michael 85, 298, 300 Arabidopsis, heritable gene silencing 259 Archaea, discovery of 238–9 Arkwright, Joseph 36–7 arsenic-based life 276 Asilomar Conference, 1975 280–1, 285 Astbury, William at the Cambridge SEB meeting 53–4 early DNA X-ray work 54, 91–4 early structure for
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