Source: The Patriot Light | AWK Network | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
The first Asilomar conference of 1975 has been both celebrated and condemned. Whichever way you lean it was certainly a pivotal moment in the history of biotechnology. Californian researchers working on GM microbes and GM viruses faced pushback for the first time on the potential hazards involved and gradually came to realise that their experiments might be dangerous and needed oversight. The critical question (for them) became: who would do the oversight? The public? The government? The scientists themselves? So they met at Asilomar, California, partly to assess the dangers and partly to create a solution to their political problem. Since the meeting was invitation-only and held behind closed doors the solution was a very self-serving one. They decided, in the absence of any meaningful critical presence, that only scientists needed to oversee their research. That solution became the model for all biotechnology oversight. It has led to uncontrolled and sometimes disastrous experiments, and to global genetic contamination by commercial products.Today, in 2025, the dangers we face from synthetic biology, mirror life, RNA technology, gene editing, etc., are much greater. Starting…
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