
As D.I.Y. Gene Editing Gains Popularity, ‘Someone Is Going to Get Hurt’ - digital55
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/science/biohackers-gene-editing-virus.html
======
jds375
This suggests to me the need of another Asilomar Conference whereby scientists
can get atop regulation ahead of the game[1]. From the book The Gene,
"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 had rarely sought to become self-regulators. As
Alan Waterman, the head of the National Science Foundation, wrote in 1962,
“Science, in its pure form, is not interested in where discoveries may lead. .
. . Its disciples are interested only in discovering the truth.” But with
recombinant DNA, Berg argued, scientists could no longer afford to focus
merely on “discovering the truth.” The truth was complex and inconvenient, and
it required sophisticated assessment. Extraordinary technologies demand
extraordinary caution, and political forces could hardly be trusted to assess
the perils or the promise of gene cloning (nor, for that matter, had political
forces been particularly wise about handling genetic technologies in the
past—as the students had pointedly reminded Berg at Erice)." [2]

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA)
[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gene:_An_Intimate_History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gene:_An_Intimate_History)
(page 231)

