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Essay
Nature 455, 290-291 (18 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/455290a; Published online 17 September 2008
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Meetings that changed the world: Asilomar 1975: DNA modification secured
Paul Berg1
- Paul Berg was one of the organizers of the International Congress on Recombinant DNA Molecules held in Asilomar, 24–27 February 1975. He is Cahill professor emeritus of biochemistry, and director emeritus of the Beckman Center of Molecular and Genetic Medicine, at Stanford University, 279 Campus Drive, Stanford, California 94305, USA. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1980 and the US National Medal of Science in 1983.
Email: pberg@stanford.edu
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Abstract
The California meeting set standards allowing geneticists to push research to its limits without endangering public health. Organizer Paul Berg asks if another such meeting could resolve today's controversies.
Today, the benefits of genetic engineering, and the risks and ethical dilemmas that it presents, are part of everyday public discourse, thrashed out in newspaper columns and by politicians and commentators everywhere. In the early 1970s, it was a very different picture.
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