Trespass.

• Author: Cummings, Claire Hope

"I have the feeling that science has transgressed a barrier that should have remained inviolate." --Dr. Erwin Chargaff, biochemist and the father of molecular biology Hidden inside Hilgard Hall, one of the oldest buildings on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, is a photograph that no one is supposed to see. It's a picture of a crippled and contorted corncob that was not created by nature, or even by agriculture, but by genetic engineering. (1) The cob is kept in a plastic bin called "the monster box," a collection of biological curiosities put together by someone who works in a secure biotechnology research facility.

What the photo shows is a cob that apparently started growing normally, then turned into another part of the corn plant, then returned to forming kernels, then went back to another form--twisting back and forth as if it could not make up its mind about what it was. It was produced by the same recombinant DNA technology that is used to create the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are in our everyday foods. When I saw this photo, I knew it was saying something very important about genetic engineering. I thought it should be published. But the person who owns it is frankly afraid of how the biotechnology industry might react, and would not agree. In order to get permission even to describe the photo for this article, I had to promise not to reveal its owner's identity.

What the distorted corncob represents is a mute challenge to the industry's claim that this technology is precise, predictable, and safe. But that this challenge should be kept hidden, and that a scientist who works at a public university should feel too intimidated to discuss it openly, told me that something more than just a scientific question was being raised. After all, if the new agricultural biotech were really safe and effective, why would the industry work so hard--as indeed it does--to keep its critics cowed and the public uninformed? Was there something about the way genetic engineering was developed, about how it works, that was inviting a closer look--a look that the industry would rather we not take? I had gone to Berkeley to see for myself what was going on behind biotechnology.

The University of California at Berkeley ("Cal") is the stage on which much of the story of genetic engineering has played out over the last 25 years. The biotechnology industry was born here in the San Francisco Bay area, and nurtured by scientists who worked at Berkeley and nearby universities. Critical controversies over the role genetic engineering and related research should have in society have erupted here. Even the architecture of the campus reflects the major scientific and policy divisions that plague this technology. Two buildings, in particular, mirror the two very different versions of biology that emerged in the last half of the twentieth century, and reflect two very different visions for agriculture in the future.

Hilgard Hall was built in 1918, at a time when mastering the classical form and celebrating beauty were important, perhaps even integral, to the accepted function of a building. Hilgard's facade is exquisitely decorated with friezes depicting sheaves of wheat, beehives, bunches of grapes, cornucopias, and bas relief sculptures of cow heads surrounded with wreaths of fruit. Above the entrance, carved in huge capital letters are the words, "TO RESCUE FOR HUMAN SOCIETY THE NATIVE VALUES OF RURAL LIFE." The massive front door opens to a grand two-story hall graced with granite, marble, and carved brass. But behind that elegant entrance is a building left in disrepair. Getting around inside Hilgard means navigating worn marble staircases and dark corridors laced with exposed pipes and heating ducts. The room where the monster box photograph is kept is small and dank. This building is home to the "old" biology--the careful observation of life, living systems, and their complex interactions. Being inside Hilgard is a visceral lesson in how Cal is neglecting the classic study of the intimate inter-relationships among agriculture, the environment, and human society.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Nearby, and standing in stark contrast to Hilgard's faded splendor, is a newer, modern office building, Koshland Hall. Koshland is not unattractive, with its pitched blue tile roof lines and bright white walls lined with blue steel windows, but it was built in the mid-1990s in a functional style that, like most new campus buildings, has all the charm and poetry of an ice cube. The interior is clean and well lit. Next to office doors hang plaques that name the corporations or foundations that fund the activities inside. This is the home of the "new biology"--the utilitarian view that life is centered in DNA and molecules can be manipulated at will. Molecular biology is clearly doing well at Cal.

Koshland Hall was named after a distinguished member of the faculty, Daniel Koshland, former editor of the journal Science and chair of Berkeley's Department of Biochemistry, now a professor emeritus. He has the unique distinction of having been present at the two most important scientific revolutions of our time: he participated both in the Manhattan Project, which developed nuclear weapons, and in the early development of molecular biology. He is credited with "transforming" the biological sciences at Berkeley.

THE NEW BIOLOGY

One hundred years ago, no one had heard of a "gene." The word was not recognized until 1909, and even after that it remained an abstraction for decades. At the time, scientists and others were making an effort to find a material basis for life, particularly heritability, the fundamental function of life. The story of genetic engineering in the United States begins with the decision to identify genes as the basis of life. But the ideological roots of this story go even deeper, into the nation's earlier history and attachment to the ideas of manifest destiny, eugenics, and social engineering.

Early in the twentieth century, the new "science" of sociology made its appearance--along with the highly appealing belief that social problems were amenable to scientific solutions. In time, sociology began to combine with genetic science, giving strong impetus to technocratic forms of social control, and particularly to eugenics--the belief that the human race could be improved by selective breeding. Until the 1930s, the science of genetics had not developed much beyond Mendelian principles of heredity, but eugenics was already being promoted as the solution to social problems. As the idea that genes determined traits in people took hold, eugenics twisted it to foster the concept that there were "good" genes and "bad" genes, good and bad traits. Eugenics eventually gained a powerful foothold both in the popular imagination and in the U.S. government, as well as in Nazi Germany. Even today, these notions underlie the decisions biotechnologists make about what genes and traits are beneficial, what organisms are engineered, and who gets to decide how this technology will be used.

According to Lily Kay, an assistant professor of the history of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, genetic engineering came about as the result of the concerted effort of a few scientists, who, along with their academic and philanthropic sponsors, had a shared vision about how they could use genetics to reshape science and society. In her book The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology, Kay writes that this vision was not so much about underlying biological principles as it was about social values. The new biology that evolved from this thinking was founded on a strong belief in "industrial capitalism" and its perceived mandate for "science-based social intervention." The potential for this idea, and the intentional strategy to use it for social purposes was clearly understood from the outset, says Kay. The developers of "molecular biology" (a term coined by the Rockefeller Foundation) were confident that it would offer them a previously unimagined power and control over both nature and society.

Science was molded to this agenda in 1945, when Vannevar Bush, the head of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development, wrote "Science, The Endless Frontier"--a landmark report that outlined how science could better serve the private sector. As Kay tells the story, at that point the search for a science-based social agenda began in earnest. It was funded and directed by business corporations and foundations acting together as "quasipublic entities" using both private and public funds to harness "the expertise of the human sciences to stem what was perceived as the nation's social and biological decay and help realize the vision of America's destiny." Eventually, the combined efforts of corporate, academic, and government interests began to bear fruit and "the boundary between individual and corporate self-interest, between private and public control, would be increasingly blurred." (2)

The story of how James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of the DNA helix in 1953 is well known. Less known, but of considerable consequence, is what followed. With little hesitation, they announced that DNA is "the secret of life"--and began to promote what was to become known as "the central dogma"--the notion that genetic information flows in only one direction, from DNA to RNA to a protein, and that this process directly determines an organism's characteristics. This dogma was, as described by geneticist Mae-Wan Ho, author of Living with the Fluid Genome, "just another way of saying that organisms are hardwired in their genetic makeup and the environment has little influence on the structure and function of the genes." In her book, Dr. Ho argues that the central dogma is too simplistic. She observes that not all DNA...