Good afternoon. I'm Andrew Tchaikovsky president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. It's a pleasure to welcome you all to the Minnesota meeting. We also extend a welcome to the radio audience throughout the Midwest who are hearing this program on Minnesota public radio's midday program. Minnesota meeting as a public affairs Forum which brings National and international speakers to Minnesota over 1800 corporate government and Community leaders belong to Minnesota meeting. The next scheduled topic for Minnesota meeting is one that cheering stops. What happens to the athlete a discussion on Athletics and higher education between Harry Edwards professor of Sociology at the University of Berkeley and a noted Sports education consultant and Paul guillot director of Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Minnesota. Their discussion will be moderated by WCCO TV sports director Mark Rosen. Minnesota meeting is very pleased to present. Today's speaker sir Hans. Kornberg. We'll talk on genetic manipulation threat or promise A View From the United Kingdom. So Hans kornberg will discuss how it has become possible to construct organisms with novel properties and to release such genetically altered organisms into the environment. You will describe the scientific advances that have occurred and the regulatory processes. He thinks are necessary to protect the environment. Sir Hans kornberg is held as Sir William done professorship of biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. And since 1982 has been master of Christ's College, Cambridge, England. Besides his research and teaching kornberg is active in the shaping of scientific policy in the United Kingdom. Following sirhan's kornberg's presentation. He will address questions from the audience. Please use the cards at your table to jot down the questions for discussion. Steve Young will move among you to manage the question and answer session. It is now my pleasure to present you sir Hans kornberg. But ladies and gentlemen, let me first of all say how very pleased and grateful I am to have this opportunity of meeting with you today. You notice that I said meeting with you in England when would say just meeting you but I'm adapting myself very rapidly to the environment. Could I just ask whether I can be heard properly at the back there. I asked this with some diffidence because a friend of mine told me that when he asked that question having found himself the six on a list of after-dinner speakers at a time with the audience was just wondering whether they're going to make the last train on a lot and he said to a gentleman with a floral waistcoat you server the floral waistcoat. Can you hear me? The man said I can but I'm willing to change places with anyone. Who count Now I'm going to talk to you about genetic manipulation, which is a phrase which may not be on everybody's lips all the time. But although it is a new way of describing this particular activity. The concept is one which is as old as man's excursions into Agriculture and into the interaction with the environment. We have been selecting plants with desirable properties Crossing them breeding them selecting ones, which we liked even better Crossing them breeding them selecting ones which were more suitable for our purposes almost as long as man has engaged in agriculture and what we see today as the corn the maze that is familiar. So familiar to you is in fact an old weed that has been genetically Dated to the process so that it is now useful to us and certainly would have great difficulty in surviving without intervention by man. Similarly. If we look at our cows that are bred to give milk or our beef cattle that is bred to give be for racehorses. These are the results of centuries of genetic manipulation. So there is nothing new or intrinsically evil about this process what has transformed the situation has been a discovery which was made about 15 years ago roughly that it is possible to cross species boundaries to make genetic changes. Now the normal processes whereby organisms breed is that they find members of the same species and the exchange genetic information. This is the process that gave rise to you and me because we all came from one single. All fertilized egg which contain genetic information from father and genetic information from mother and the fact that this genetic information could be assembled and intermingled and give rise to a stable type which is us is due to the fact that there was enough similarity in the genetic material from mum and the genetic material from dad to form Crossovers and links and to breed true now there isn't that similarity. In the cells of species that are not related the in fact one of the main mechanisms which we now use to our own benefit for defending ourselves against attack by Foreign viruses is to take the genetic information of the virus, which would normally tell ourselves stop making you and me but make virus to take that genetic material and destroyed destroyed by cutting it at various points. And that is the reason why species do not in general interbreed. Now, we have decided it within the last 15 years to overcome this particular difficulty and to make this the process a little more understandable if our radio audience will forgive me. I would like to just show you a few pictures which make this quite clear. The first picture we have is a computer model of the material that carries the genetic information. Which is called DNA and I'm happy to talk about this today because it is 35 years to the day that that was discovered. The original manuscript was sent in on the 2nd of April 1953 by Watson and Crick but it saw the light of day on the twelve ten days later. Now this material the genetic information is carried on what could be Loosely regarded as a spiral staircase where you have a backbone which is made up of sugars and phosphates and sugars and phosphates and sugars and phosphates which is connected to the other Bannister which are also made of sugars and phosphates and sugars and phosphate by the Treads and the Treads are made up of two kinds of bases. Flat molecules which either have two rings stuck together to form purines and they will we will for short call them a and t sorry this is T or things which have only one ring and they're called G and C. Now the geometry of the system is such that wherever you have an A. You also have a tea opposite and where you ever you have a g. You always have a see opposite it so that in a sense that if you were to take these apart. And allow them to find their Partners the geometry of the system dictates that it would always find the partner that they'd already left. So whenever you peel these strands apart wherever you are now left with an a you're bound to put a tee opposite wherever you're left with a G. You're bound to put A/C opposite in other words you ensure what is the fundamental property of living matter? And that is that if one strand gives rise to two daughter strand they each will find Partners which are an exact copy of what was in the parent Strand and it is cause this that as Ogden Nash so nicely put it ensures that bears have Cubs and bats have bit ins swans of signals cats have kittens whales have calves dogs have puppies and go Use just have little guppies. in other words the maintenance of identity now what we have done 15 years ago was to recognize that the mechanism which destroys foreign DNA can be used to our own purposes. This is an agency known as a restriction enzyme which sees the fact that wherever there's a g. There's a see wherever the T. There's an A on the other strand and uses an enzyme to cut this either straight or at an angle and the angle is quite specific to the particular agent that is being used. So that in this case, for example, there are one two three gaap basis here which intervene before one strand cut another and you'll see that the A and G which is cut here is the same as the DNA which is cut there. It is known as a palindromic sequence. In other words. It reads the same backwards as forwards, you know, like the He's Able was I ere I saw Elba which of course reads exactly the same if you read it backwards and we can find innumerable. Well, not in numeral but many many many enzymes which specifically recognized sequences such as this or such as this or I could we re You by showing many more slides which show exactly the same. And that enables us now to take a piece of DNA and cut it at a precise point that we determine by buying the right enzyme from a manufacturer and making sure we got the label, right? And you see that the consequence of this is rather interesting. If you look at this one, for example, you will see that this strand now has a bit left over where there isn't a partner for this strength. This one is opposite this but there is a gap here. So if we were now to bring in another strand or lay down fresh DNA, it would automatically ensure that it pays itself in the correct way so that if for example we were to use bacteria and here just to introduce you to my friends E.coli, which are there are little bacteria. This is a size of a red blood cell to see how small they are and much of the original work was done with this strain of E coli which has a very interesting genetic system as well as a very easy way of life, which can be manipulating laboratory leads me. In fact to the belief that I often expressed that there are really only two kinds of bacteria one is e.coli and the other is not that if we use this ecola as a stock as a source of DNA we And cut the DNA in such a way as to ensure that we can put whatever else we want in a precise way on the opposite strand now ecola is useful for another purpose because you and I have our Eco our DNA enshrined in the chromosomes of the cell E. Coli does things rather differently. It also has chromosomes. There's the chromosome but it also has little Circles of DNA which lead an autonomous rather independent life of their own. They are called plasmids. Now, here's a picture of a plasma and they are responsible for carrying all sorts of genetic trays that we summer which we don't like like for example antibiotic resistance. If for example, you're infected whilst Europe so unfortunate as to be a patient in a hospital, it is likely that the infection will not be easily. To buy antibiotics because the organisms which now in fact you'll have been selected in the hospitals for the fact that they can resist antibiotics and they do so by carrying the antibiotic resistance usually on this kind of plasmid, but if we now take these plasmids and we do this cutting business that I will already described in other words, we step out a bit here then you see that as I had already Illustrated. We have a sticky end left here and the sticky and we'd left their weather isn't a partner strand. So all we then have to do is to take the same cutting agent to the bit of DNA that we want and subjected to the same process to have a sticky end there and is sticky and there and we know that this sticky end must be the partner of that and this sticky end must be the partner of that simply because the geometry of the system dictates itself. So all we now have to do To make sure that that bit can be stitched into their like that which can easily be done because there is an enzyme called a ligase which does this and we have now brought in specific piece of DNA from a source, which the organism knows nothing about we could have manufactured it ourselves in our bathroom with we wanted to synthetic lie or taking it from another organism and which will now breed true so that all the future bacteria if we introduce this back into the bacterium will contain these plasmids with that bit of DNA stitched into place and able to express its potential ever after we have crossed species barriers. And you can see that this has been tremendously useful for example, here is a picture of the normal bacterium and here is a picture of bacteria which are obviously congested with something and if we take a slice of that bacterium, we will see that instead of a normal bacterium. We will see that these are congested with great Blobs of stuff which turns out to be human insulin. Now the reason for doing this it's actually human proinsulin, which is converted to human insulin. But the reason for doing this is of course the essence of biotechnology if you are so unfortunate to suffer from diabetes you need insulin for treatment insulin is made in the pancreas. How do you get insulin out of a pancreas? Well, you slaughter a cow or you Slaughter pigs and you extract it and you get Pig insulin or you could call insulin but that isn't quite the same as human insulin chemically, there's a small difference if you can however make the gene for human insulin and put it into a bacterium. You can now make human insulin literally by the bucketful for just a few cents and that of course is a marvelous thing to do and you do this because we all have stitched the gene for human insulin into the plasmid. And there is the picture of the plasmid actually carrying the gene for human insulin, but you can't tell where the gene is because the gene is just as much DNA as is the rest of the plasmid it has become part of the bacterium is just the bacterium now has problems leading a normal life because it is so full of insulin. But this of course is the the great hope that inspires the whole concept of genetic manipulation namely that we can buy this simple and relatively I'm complicated and sophisticated procedure make some things that are either difficult to obtain or very expensive to obtain readily available for the benefit of mankind. May I have the lights please now, this is fine. We have transferred genes across species barriers and we can see from this that there is an immediate and obvious benefit. On the other hand this kind of procedure the fact that we have exchange genetic material across barriers that we have learned to live with for so many years has also caused tremendous alarm at a hearing for permission to release a genetically manipulated bacterium into the environment. I'll come back to this later that was held in to Lake before the Tule Lake City Council in California. Let me quote you what one of the people who gave evidence there said quote when you are dealing with a crazy cell and that was a crazy. So when you are dealing with a crazy sell boy, you've got problems now molecular biologists have found a way to alter all Life by combining genes into new substances called recombinant DNA and that was what this was the most dangerous biological technology. Existence today perhaps more so than the atom bomb. These are the most awesome dangerous uncontrollable forms of life cut and fashion to a mad scientist fancy. Now that is the extreme reaction that this kind of technology has exposed and I brought here just to show you that this isn't confined only to this side of the Atlantic. This is a an article which appeared in a British newspaper on March the 18th of this year's less than a month ago, which has the headline the danger when science plagues God and more or less says, you know that we're going to be making centers or Griffin's or Monsters of various kinds now, I fully understand that any new technology raises points raises problems, which need to be addressed and it is in an effort to initiate this kind of rational examination of the Them that I thought it would be sensible for me to present at least a scientist point of view. And also since I am the chairman of the committee in the United Kingdom that regulates these activities to give you a view of how we in the United Kingdom are the moment approaching the issue of public perception and public concern. Let me first of all say that the original definition of genetic manipulation of something you do to material. You don't really know anything about has now been changed to be more precise and to accompanies this kind of activity namely we Define it now as the formation of new combinations of hereditable material by the insulation insertion of nucleic acid molecules, which were produced outside the cell we've actually done something in the test tube and we should be input into a vector system. So as to allow their incorporation into the host cell or into the organism in which they do not occur normally but in which they are capable of propagation, so the Essences we have to do something to the genetic material and put it in a place in which it would not normally occur and allow it to grow and that is an activity which clearly needs to be examined and it rains Two main points Point number one is is the technique inherently dangerous and point to is will our ability to create hitherto unknown quote-unquote organisms create new hazards either too man, or to the environment and I'd like briefly just to address those two points. The first point is will the technique of recombinant DNA DNA technology is that inherently dangerous to the people who are practicing it or to the people like you and me who are going to be the receiving end. Now, let me just point to the fact which I've already mentioned that it is now 15 years since we began to use the techniques and it is roughly 15 years since we began to exploit these techniques both in the laboratory. And in the way that I've pictured in Industry vast number of organisms containing recombinant a are now used to use to make drugs to make Fine Chemicals to make Pharmaceuticals to make different beer to make different cheese to make all sorts of things in industrial plants. This kind of activity is unique in one sense. I know of no other industry which for 15 years has not had one single accident or one injury to the health of the worker as a result of this technology. And I think that the fact that we have 15 years of use behind us must give us at least the confidence to assume that it is not inherently dangerous to the people who are using it. So if we remember that all we are doing is with greater precision and greater sophistication moving DNA in ways in which it is normally moved but rather sloppily within species, then I think we can see that there is nothing inherently dangerous in the technique. Since that time we have in fact had to revise our views a little bit because we now know that for example, when you look at oak trees and you see they have goals Crown goals on them that that is due to the fact that a bacterium agrobacterium tumefaciens has actually injected its DNA into the plant and the DNA of the bacterium has been incorporated into the plant. If we now take the DNA that causes these Crown goals which are a kind of plant cancer if we take those out the bacterium will still be able to transfer DNA to the plant it will still react but it will no longer cause the cancer and we see here here's a model of something which does cross species barriers, but does so normally so it isn't all that new after all so let me now come to the next question which is all right. Well are we is our ability to create new? Organisms is that one which creates new hazards? Well, the first thing I would seriously do is to challenge the word organism because as you can see that plasmid looks exactly like any other plasmid although it contains the gene for insulin from humans and the organism we've got which you saw on the picture is undoubtedly still my bacterium E.coli. The only thing it looks sick. What we have produced is not a monster but a monstrosity now, we don't mind too much about creating monstrosity is in bacteria because we don't have a society for the protection of bacteria yet. As far as I know and we feel that it's more important to save a sick human being suffers from diabetes than to worry about the health of bacteria. So we at the moment say, alright, we are willing to pay the moral price for creating monstrosities because it is of benefit to us where I think there is a legitimate concern is if we create monstrosity is for purposes other than to benefit mankind, but that is not a safety problem. It is a moral problem but is nevertheless one which we ought to remember. Another concern which is often voiced is can we accidentally create pathogens that is organisms which will cause disease from organisms which are quite harmless by popping into them some terrible Jean and again, I have lots of quotations from newspapers, which believe that we're just on the edge of biological warfare with even more dangerous organisms being produced by mad scientists in their kitchens. And in fact, I've heard it seriously suggested and I have quotations from both sides that absolutely certainly AIDS is due to the fact that American scientists have altered the virus to produce the AIDS disease and I have another paper which shows that it was Russian scientists who altered a virus to peruse the AIDS disease and I can assure you from the knowledge of the genetic makeup of the AIDS virus has that if we were able to produce Was that scene by genetic engineering would be a lot further than we are now, it was not produced accidental in was certain not produced by genetic engineering pathogenicity is complex the organism to produce disease in a plant or inside you and me must be adapted to the way of life to inhabit that environment. It must be able to interact with the specific receptors in the plant or the organism. It must be able to resist host defenses. It must be able to colonize specific Services. There are many many many genes involved and just by taking E.coli and putting a toxin gene into it will not convert it into a pathogenic organism and indeed very distinguished scientist. Dr. William Smith try to still the alarm on this point in the early days of genetic manipulation, but actually drink Because of bacteria that had been genetic manipulated in order to see how long they survive in his gut and whether they would cause disease they didn't survive for long more than about a day or so and they didn't cause disease but I never followed his example and willing to take his word for it. But of course, there's one other thought we have to remember that is to cause a mild dysfunction tummy upset or whatever. It is is a symptom that some kind of pathogenic change is happening a catastrophic disease change would be the one which would require many many many genetic changes and give us plenty of warning to be alerted to something going wrong before you get to it. So that is again is this this this ability to assess the number of genes involved that have to change in order to cause disease that is an important factor in risk assessment and indeed is very much part of the procedures. We now use to assess risks to man or the environment is when we when we look at new processes to taking over of new environment is another one we say we put these bacteria into the ground or on to our plant and they will take over the environment well, We have been putting bacteria onto Pine Forest for years and years and years the so called bacillus thuringiensis. That is a bacterium which makes a toxin which kills the pine Beauty moth has been sprayed on the pine forests of Scotland of Canada of the western United States for years buckets of them by from airplanes. And if you actually ask how long do they survive at the most it's three four days or so and then they disappear and they disappear because bacillus thuringiensis doesn't normally live on Pine forests. And therefore it is ill adapted to compete with the organisms that do and the thought that by introducing an organism that normally lives in environment, but it has been altered back into the environment and believing that it might take over means that you can outguess Evolution. You can actually do better than the good Lord did after three Million years 3 billion years of experimenting to produce something which is better adapted than it actually is so far. We have never been able to improve on nature everything we do to the organism handicaps the organism and although we obviously must weigh up the risks and consider the sites. We put it the the target nature of the organism and what we have done to it. I think the thought that an organism will take over the environment is far-fetched. This is a cartoon from The New Yorker where you see the Garden of Eden and man and Adam and Eve being expelled and one Angel is saying to the other frankly I think will regret introducing these organisms into the environment and and I think he's right but that is because man wasn't already in the environment and it had we put a rabbit in to Australia or the Kudzu Vine into areas, which do not already could contain. Could survive we might have done run the risk of environmental upset as we know we have done but putting do people in to say the middle of New York City. I doubt whether they would immediately take over New York City because there are so many other people there and that is after all what we are trying to do. Now with this in mind we have in Britain decided may have the lights again that we ought to Remember that the basic motivation of this kind of procedure is not to provide. Occupational therapy for unemployed academics, but to to be of benefit to mankind to make things available that are otherwise difficult to obtain and we mustn't lose the benefits of that but nevertheless we must also reasonably direct ourselves to public concerns and we must evaluate the risks so that we neither produce regulations that are too stringent for people in Industry to use them nor 2 lakhs to run the risk that we are acting being accused that we acting irresponsibly. So we have set up a procedure to evaluate each application to do genetic manipulations on a case-by-case basis and this was done because there are four main components of risk acceptance acceptance. The first is that there must be an objective assessment and measurement of the ratio of risks to benefits now that can be done by scientists. And scientists are on this committee to do just that there must be an understanding of the limitations and assumptions of risk assessment that must also be done by scientists and scientists do that because we have to know not only is our statement true. But how true is it and what are the limits of uncertainty but I've always maintained there must be two other essential ingredients. There must be a public perception of risks and benefit and it is the public must agree that these are interpretation should be correct and there must be a consideration of the distributional aspects namely the recognition of the risks and benefits May differ in one part of the country from those in another part of the country. Obviously, I don't have to to worry too much about diseases which affect soybeans or corn because in where I come from we don't grow soybeans or corn but I clearly you do so there has to be that element has to be considered to and those two components of the risk assessment procedure the public exception perception and the distribution aspect cannot be left to scientists. They must involve the members of the public who are going to be recipients of this process. In other words, the ultimate decision must impart we scientific but it must also in part be political and for that reason my committee committee, which I chair and which advises the United Kingdom government through the health and safety executive contains, not only ecologist and not only scientists of microbial genetics. S and microbiologist but it also contains members of the trade unions members of the employers federation's members of our Ministry of Agriculture members of Ministry of Health the department of the environment The Nature Conservancy all the people who are likely to have responsibility for these wider parts of the risk assessment procedure. And of course, the United States is using a very similar approach the European commission is now accepting basically of the kind of procedure that we have jointly put forward and we are hoping to get some kind of uniform action throughout the whole of the Civilized world. We can already see that the public perception of the dangers Has Changed For example some five years ago. Steve Linda out in Berkeley, California noticed that the reason why strawberry plants froze When the temperature went to minus 2 degrees Celsius also was because the leaves were coated with bacteria which contained an agent which would cause ice crystals to fall. So he took these bacteria and remove the gene by genetic manipulation from them so that the bacteria was still the same but they could no longer form ice crystals. And he said now in order to make this work to show that is useful. I would like to try spraying some strawberry plants out in a field with these bacteria and show that they cause no damage. Well unexpectedly all hell broke loose and there were lawsuits and injunctions and for five years in this experiment couldn't even be tried. And then in April is to gain April in April last year. It was tried. But in order to try it the person who sprayed these bacteria on to the plants had quite ludicrously these are bacteria, which are normally there you see with just had a gene removal how to dress up like this and this is the picture that appeared on the front page of the New York Times. That's where I took it from now in order to show that the experiment worked you had of course to do this at a time when things froze, but before the experiment could even be started the same evening a mad group of people. Determined to preserve the sanctity of the environment came into the plot and tore up all the plants. So the experiment was right a few months later permission was given to try to gain in August this time as you can see the man didn't have to put on the moon suit. All he had was a little mask around his face to stop himself from a inhaling the bacteria. And otherwise, he was wearing a track suit and Jim Sue's and there it is and that experiment is now going on Happily a similar experiment has been done in the Southern United States. This is in California, and we already know that the bacteria cannot compete with the ones that are normally there. They hardly move they don't survive very strongly, but they do protect the plants apparently from frost damage. Now, the interesting thing is that this appeared on the front page of the New York Times this did not Well, of course, we have a long way to go and it would be foolish for me to pretend that there is absolutely no reason why there should be any concern but it does seem to me equally foolish to pretend that everything we do to the environment is likely to cause a cataclysm or a disaster. In fact the gene pool out there the interaction of organisms all over the place that is out there in the environment is so vast that our ability to affected greatly is very small indeed. I always think of that Fable of Aesop's where the fly that sat on the axle of the wheel of The Chariot says look at the dust. I raised we raised very little dust on the hole in the cosmic scheme of things, but it seems to me that the kind of decisions we have now taken at least to approach this sensibly not to Poopoo the Changes but to examine them and to do risk assessment has enabled us to chew. One of the three options that are open to us. The first would be a political option. I mean supposing that see that Jerry Joseph would not welcome the idea supposing I were to introduce tiger into the Hubert Humphrey Center. Well, there would be three decisions that the the governor's would the director would have to take a political decision would be to say no, we will ban Tigers that's the end of that we could just ban this activity but in doing so we would literally lose all the benefits that might accrue to us. We could take a technical decision. That is you can say yes, you can bring in a tiger but you must pull all its teeth and remove its claws. Well, we can do something along these lines and indeed. We already do that routinely with the organisms we use. We want to propose or proposed to releasing the environment particularly Professor Curtis in. Can't quite remember, where is something that's not in Louisville, Kentucky. First of Curtis has constructed strains of organisms, which are extremely sensitive to sunlight and we just won't survive similarly. We have released viruses that infect caterpillars that grow into moths that damage plants we have infected we have created viruses that have been altered genetically. So the viruses don't make their protective coats anymore. They can still act as infective agent for the caterpillars and kill the maths, but they can't survive and I've just had all in fact last week the details of that experiments to show that these viruses totally disappear after one day so we can actually or almost totally after one day. We're totally after one week so we can already do something to remove teeth and Claws, but of course we had can only do this to a limited extent because at the end of it will end up with the hearthrug not with the Tiger. Or we can do a managerial system, which is our third option and the managerial system is the one which we have advocated which is to appoint a keeper who is conscientious who's reliable will make sure that the tiger is watered and fed, but won't get out and do and do harm and by using options two and three together by using partly the disablement option the technical option and the managerial option of appointing a keeper. We hope that we are proceeding cautiously and sensibly and who knows we may even discover that our tiger is only a paper tiger. Thank you. Thank you very much sir hand. There are futurist. I know who predict that genetic manipulation and biotechnology will open up a whole new level of human civilization and perhaps you have helped us. They recognize that we're in the opening Decades of something like if we think back in history the Bronze Age or the age which began with the Industrial Revolution with steam power and then electric power the potential is really vast and perhaps it is that potential which gives rise to some of these uncertainties and fears. I'd like to take questions from the group here or comment just signal me and I'll come by with the microphone and Jane mrazek will be in the other side of the room with your questions or comments Jerry. It seems to me sir hands. If this is the kind of issue about which one can say the glass is half full or the glass is half empty. I'm thinking now of let's say something like agent orange, which was used in the Vietnam War. I mean how in a free Society do you really control? And I maybe that's not a bad a good word to use with a scientist. But how do you control what happens in biotechnology to be sure that it really does impact favorably on humans. Well that of course is the essence which all Regulatory Agencies and all governments have this a problem of the problem to have to face. Let me just say that the analogy with agent orange I think is an unfortunate one because agent orange was chemical which is known now definitely to cause harm I know of as I said before of no way in which this technology has yet caused harm or can cause harm physical harm but we we have there's another difference to agent orange was a material defoliant which was sprayed from Planes in the Vietnam War which was impure and it is the impurity which caused the harm the nice thing about this technique is that instead of just relying on romance to give rise ultimately to the crossing and exchange of genetic information. We do this very unromantic lie Cold Blood by snipping out just the gene. We want not the impurity which is stuck onto it so I can see that the that the the the alarm which attends our procedures is probably several orders of magnitude less, but you're quite right as I made it quite clear the the an essential feature of the successful or otherwise of this technique and its ability to grow and find acceptance is that the public must a have the knowledge that Watchdog processes in which not just scientists are brought to bear to assess the risks as far as possible. Secondly that they must have confidence in the people and in the procedures which are employed they must themselves participate in it. And thirdly there must always be a mechanism for Knowing what is being done and being able to stop it. And this is why my committee which until now has been voluntarily receiving notifications from people who want to engage in this work has now got the health and safety executive to recommend to the government and the government will accept it that it is no longer voluntary. It is mandatory now, it is illegal to do this kind of procedure without telling me about it and by telling me about it means that I must be sure not only that you are competent to do it but that you are competent to recall the experiment if it goes wrong and that you must also know you are legally obliged that you must tell me of the outcome. If it's a failure, I must know that it and both these features are built into the process. Thank you question back there. Actor kornberg in this area and I suppose your area solid wastes known in the outside world is garbage is a very expensive proposition. We're trying to incinerate the stuff and it costs about $30 a ton more to do that in landfill in 20 years for every thousand tons of garbage you try to incinerate that's amounts to about 1.3 billion dollars. Is there any action being taken to develop some bacteria that might speed up the process and landfill and when is that going to be available? Thank you. The answer to the question is yes, and now there are already organizations which they are not genetically manipulated bacteria up till now but the ordinary bacteria which are being used by companies. There's one particular I know of in South Wales in Swansea, which uses bacteria deliberately to spray tan on landfill sites and which now actually makes money by trapping the methane which is evolved and using it for heating purposes and we are now extending this and I think this is one of the growth areas of genetic manipulation so that we can also use the same kind of procedure as a much more efficient way of reclamation of iron Diane I mean Metals in rare Metals in oars in waste materials extension and enhancement of oil recovery all sorts of things that were previously regarded as unfortunately waste materials can now be shown to be useful again. If only we know the right way of doing it and this is very actively being pursued by the way. I should say that I'm glad you used the word garbage because in molecular biology we have sequences of DNA which don't seem to make any sense. They are just there they don't read anything and sometimes people refer to them as garbage and sometimes refer to them as junk. I've discovered through bitter experience having moved house twice recently that the difference is that garbage you throw out junk you keep thank you. Mr. Regal. It's dr. Kornberg. I was intrigued by the idea of making a virus without a coat and I was wondering if you've been able to make a virus that will not exchange genes with the native population. Of course an influence in Avian Influenza and in normal influenza. There's a lot of recombination that takes place. Have you been able to find a way to prevent the engineered virus from exchanging its genes with the native population at me Festival make it clear that I didn't do this work with a virus. It was done by a man called John Bishop at The Institute of terrestrial now, it's it's it's the Institute of insect physiology in Oxford and he uses the baculovirus which infects caterpillars now. I don't think anybody has has I don't even know of anybody who's addressed himself to the question that you raised about preventing the exchange of genetic information between virus themselves. So the answer the question is, I don't know what is clear. However, is that people are using viruses and they're using rickettsia oil derived materials as vectors for vaccines. So for example, when you know you and I whenever we traveled abroad in the old days we had to be vaccinated in smallpox. There is now no smallpox, but the smallpox vaccine can still be used for throwing away the jeans you don't want and putting a jeans to protect you against hepatitis cholera toothache for all I know and and and use that as a vector and that is very actively being pursued and that of course is genetic manipulation as well. Thank you a question over there Jane. A doctor should we be concerned at all that the recombinant techniques May interrupt a natural evolutionary process. So as to preclude future evolutionary changes, which might be beneficial to us. Let me give you just a time scale. If we assume that the Earth is roughly one year old that it was created on the first of January 1987. Then the first living organism arrived about 24th of September. The first sign of life was the beginning of December and Jesus Christ was roughly at 4 p.m. On the 31st of December. So the time scale that you and I are talking about is a microsecond just on the edge of the New Year evolutionary process has been going on for three times ten to the ninth years. I think what you and I can do will make very little difference. So the answer is I'm not worried and I hope you're not. Thank you a question here. You've described the safeguards involved in in the proper control over the process by responsible societies. My concern is the irresponsible society and how responsible societies tend to take their knowledge and benevolently passed it out to everyone including those who may not wish to use it the Control process. It seems Seems to break down to me in that mind where we take what we learn in doing this here and and some are all of that passes to someone who doesn't have a benevolent intent in mind. How do we protect against that? Well, it's like asking how do you protect yourself against terrorists? I'm not sure that I know the answer. I think we the whole concept of law British law and the United States on which it is based is based on the concept of the reasonable man. And I think there is no defense against the Unreasonable Man except vigilance. We know for example that the the procedures of genetic manipulation are those that are Schoolboy can use at home. We hope by legislating that in a reasonable Society. The Schoolboy will be prevented from doing this and that his teachers will know that they have to notify and get permission to do certain things. But if somebody in the Backwoods of some South American country or anywhere else, I don't want to single out South America decides to go gung-ho and do it all by himself a we don't know about it and B, we couldn't stop it. I think that is a political problem which transcends this particular technology, but it is one which affects all activities. Which are science based? It's very unsatisfactory answer but can use suggest any anything that I've missed. No, I don't I just it seems to me that that by fostering development of the technology the process and by by experimenting and learning more ourselves were creating the potential for Problem by the fact that that that ability will be transported to people whose purpose is not the same as ours. I'm afraid that is so but the first thing is you can't stop knowledge accruing and secondly is having got it you can't put it back into the bottle. Thank you have given us a paradigm of human interaction with the environment and I'd like to ask you for a larger question on that is as I sent it in a simplistic way that the natural evolutionary order was one of recycling. What is used to support some organism dies and then passes on to something else. Whereas The Human Experience has been if you will to break that and and our modern industrial civilization has been based on the extraction of materials, which are not recycled. I earned the iron ore in northern. Minnesota is gone. They're just great big holes in the ground of presumably at some point the hydrocarbons will have been pumped out and burnt or turned into plastic. Is there a possibility that the Jour technology biotechnology will create raw materials in an organic recyclable fashion so that we can sustain the kind of civilization. We have materially but live much more in harmony with nature. I think that's just a very real possibility and to my mind that is one of his greatest hopes. You see a few years ago. Remember reading a document which showed that and I'm sure that you gentlemen who are involved in business will know this much better than I do that for example, the price of copper is inexorably going going up because copper is being exhausted and there's going to be more and more demand of copper and copper price. If you wanted to make a fortune cup of Futures is the thing. In fact, the price of copper is going down and it's going down not because people are finding more copper, but because more than technology has enabled us to do without copper. We no longer need to may use copper for things that we can make like optic fibers. We can make from glass or Plastics or whatever and I think that biotechnology by enabling us to make materials which are either very rare difficult to obtain all which couldn't be made at all naturally will enable us again to capitalize on things which are going to be in short supply so as to be able substitute and perhaps even to improve on materials that we've used in the past and I'm optimistic. Now. I know that an optimist is defined as a realist who doesn't know the facts, but they are but the fact is I am optimistic that we are not that that as a sentient human beings as sentient beings have been around for at least a number of years that we're not willingly going to commit suicide through our own stupidity in this way. So my great hope is that by being able to harness our knowledge of genetic manipulations to do things that will give us an entirely new approach to Natural Resources. We may in fact be able to avoid exhausting our planet and ruining the environment in which we all and our children. Hope to live. Thank you very much around. Thank you very much. Dr. Kornberg. I'd like to present to you today. The Minnesota peace pipe. It's created by Minnesota artist Robert rose beer in a symbolic of the human bonds, which we must maintain in order to live peaceably. Thank you very much for joining us.