Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Concepts

As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age

by Matthew Cobb · 15 Nov 2022 · 772pp · 150,109 words

, ‘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 Asilomar

…

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 into

…

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 memoirs

…

.37 Despite Ashby’s endorsement of the suggestion and Brenner’s secondment to the Asilomar organising committee in November, there was no slot on the Asilomar conference agenda for any discussion of this approach. The Ashby report left New Scientist unimpressed. The magazine complained that Ashby and his colleagues had dodged the

…

. But there was a catch. Swanson had no scientific knowledge and no contacts with molecular biologists. His solution was to cold-call scientists on the Asilomar conference attendance list and to plead with them to work with him. He repeatedly got the brush-off until he got to Herb Boyer at the

…

, 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 editing

…

, 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 as

…

.) at Asilomar. The young man, top right, was identified on Twitter as UK plant geneticist Ray Dixon, who is still an active researcher. 3. The Asilomar conference, February 1975. From top left, clockwise: Maxine Singer; David Baltimore (l.) and Norton Zinder (r.); Soviet scientists Vladimir Engelhardt (l.) and Alexander Bayev (r.); Sydney

…

the summary. He could not remember, but, sharp as a tack at ninety-five years old, in his mind’s eye he could see the Asilomar conference centre duplicator churning off the copies. 71 Letter from Berg to Brenner, 15 March 1975, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archive, SB/4/1/25. http

…

: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archive 2. Herb Boyer (l.) and Paul Berg (r.) at Asilomar. Photo: San Francisco Chronice/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images 3. The Asilomar conference, February 1975. Photograph contact sheets/Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Oral History Program 4. David Baltimore and Wally Gilbert. Photo: Rick Stafford 5. Protestors at an

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 of

…

on recombinant 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, 25, and

…

. 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 a wonderful

…

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 and

…

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 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 limit

…

technology. They publish their concerns 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 academies

…

). 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 Asilomar.” Some

…

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 genetics and gene

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

by Walter Isaacson · 9 Mar 2021 · 700pp · 160,604 words

, but he stayed silent as 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

…

.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 few

…

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 the

…

, 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 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 Asilomar. “I

…

Kozubek, Modern Prometheus (Cambridge, 2016), 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

The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee · 16 May 2016 · 824pp · 218,333 words

, 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 it

…

the next steps. Eventually, this second meeting would so far overshadow the first in its influence and 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

…

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. The

…

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 recombinant

…

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 “patent

…

. 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, 93

…

Berg, 1993 and 2013; and Donald S. Fredrickson, “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, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

…

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. “You fucked the plasmid group”: Crotty, Ahead of

…

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 Roosevelt

…

, 119, 120 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

…

, 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, 215

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

. 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 case

…

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, where

…

. . . . ” 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 is

…

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 and

Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence

by Jacob Turner · 29 Oct 2018 · 688pp · 147,571 words

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 specialists in economics, law, ethics and philosophy.81 The

…

/berg-article.html, accessed 1 June 2018. 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, “Asilomar and Recombinant

…

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 of

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 his

…

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 That

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 accidental

…

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 have

…

/6/18127430/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 Case

…

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, 42 atherosclerosis

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

by James Barrat · 30 Sep 2013 · 294pp · 81,292 words

labs through carelessness or 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

…

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 a

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

by Matthew Cobb · 6 Jul 2015 · 608pp · 150,324 words

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 copy

…

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 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

…

., 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 5

…

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 human

…

, 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 DNA