Report of the Organizing Committee of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules In its report to the Assembly of Life Sciences of the National Research Council (Science 185:303 (1974)), the Committee onRecombinant DNAMolecules urged that an international meeting of involved scientists from through- out the world be convened to review scientific progress in this area and to discuss appropriate ways to deal with the potential biohazards of recombinant DNA molecules, combinant DNA Molecules met during February 24-27, 1975, at the Asilornar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. This report,drafted by the Organizing Committee (Paul Berg, Chairman, David Baltimore, Sydney Brenner, Richard Roblin and Maxine Singer), summarizes the organization, proceedings and recommendations of the Conference. - The Asilomar Conference on Re- J. -4- The Conference was sponsored by the U. S. National Academy of Sciences with financial support from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Besides providing the administrative and travel costs needed to organ- ize the meeting, these funds paid the travel and living expenses for many of the U.S. and foreign participants. To ensure both the greatest opportunity for effective discus- sions of the relevant scientific issues and the most frank and searching analysis of the potential risks, attendance at the Conference was limited. Individuals receiving invitations from the Organizing C om- mittee'were a) and discussion sessions, b) presently engaged in or contemplating researches with recombinant DNA molecules and c) experts who could provide special information and insight to the question of assessing and dealing with the potential hazards of such work. representation from U. S, as well as foreign scientific and govern- mental agencies was not sought, many of these organizations were informed as to those that had been invited to participate in the Conference. chosen by the chairmen responsible for the scientific Though official - 2- Oi the 155 participaDts, 83 were from U. S. research, governmental and industrial institutions, 5 1 were from comparable organizatioiis oiLtsidz the U.S. and 21 represented the lay and scientific news medin. (Appendix A provides the names and affjliations of participants, ) Though there would `nave been some advantages to publishing the Proceedings of the Conference, the Organizing Committee chose not to pursue this course. Instead, the presentations and discussions were recorded on auc?io tape; these recoydings, therefore, provide a verbatim record of the transactions. Inasmuch as the Conference participants were assured that the recordings would be used for arch- ival purposes only, we propose that the seven reels of audio tape and their diaries (Appendix 13) should be retained by the Academy €or future reference and that their copying or distribntion be proscribed. The Conference program (Appendix C) focused on five subject areas: Ecology of plasmids and enteric bacteria; molecular biology of prokaryote plasmids and their use for molecular cloning; recombinants involving animal virus DNAs; involving eukaryote DNAs; from work on synthetic recombinant DNAs. organizing the formal presentations and the panel-led discussions in each subject area was given to a group of four to six individuals synthetic synthetic recombinants and ethical and legal concerns arising The responsibility for organized by a program chairman. assigned the first two subject areas merged and functioned as a single group for purposes of program preparation and presentation. } Each group met once or twice prior to the Conference to select speakers and discussers, to organize their formal scientific presentations and to draft working papers for distribution and use at the Conference (Appendices D, E, F). area to select and organize the presentations most relevant to the scientific and biohazard issue. Moreover, these groups were encour- aged to prepare written statements containing propositions and recom- mendations for assessing and dealing with the real and possible biohazards. during the Conference to explore the implications and consequences of (Subsequently the working groups Our intent was to permit the experts in each These planning groups also met with other participants - 3- their recommendations. also held during "free" tirnes to design and plan construction of safer cloning vehicles (plasmids and phages) and safer bacterial hosts (see Appendix G). emerging from the Conference indicates that these unscheduled events were useful and germinal. Several unscheduled ''wOr1iShops" tvp,re The nearly unanimous acceptance of the recommendations The task of summarizing the views and conclusions developed at the Conference was accepted by the Organizing Committee, statement, entitled "Provisional Statement of the Conference Proceed- ings"(Appendix H) was drafted at the end of the third day of the Confer- ence and served as the working document for the discussion during the final session of the meeting. mendations offered in the document elicited contrary views, particularly as to the assessment of the risks and how to deal with them. section of the provisional statement was debated, suggestions for deletions, additions, and modifications in the woraing were considered and in the end the Conference participants voted by hands for adoption or rejection of the various amended propositions. Left unchallenged, and supported by the overwhelming majority of the participants, was the recommendation that most of the research with synthetic recom- binant DNAs could proceed provided that the experiments were performed under conditions which ensure a minimum of risk to the experimenters and the public at large. Moreover, there was virtually unanimous acceptance of the principle that adequate containment, both physical and biological, must be considered an essential feature of each parti- cular experimental protocol. At the meeting's end it was agreed that the Organizing Committee would redraft the statement SO that it would reflect the discussions and positions adopted by the balloting at the Conference as well as views offered by written submissions following the Conference. A As expected, the conclusions and recorn- Each The agreed upon principles, together with more specific recom- mendations and guidelines, are included in a revised statement entitled "Summary Statement of the Asilomar Conference on Recombinand DNA Molecules'' (Appendix I). Inasmuch as section 5 of the Provisional -4- statement of the Conference Proceedings (Appendix H) was not discussed by the participants and because the proposal is appropriate primarily to United States institutions, it has been omitted from the revised summary statement. compliance with any promulgated containment guidelines could be moni- tored would be useful. a plausible model of how such a monitoring process could function (Appendix 3). Rut we believe a proposal as to how Accordingly, we have included an outline for We recommend that the statement designated Appendix I be published as quickly as possible in appropriate scientific journals, e. g., Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and that the statement also be distributed to the Conference participants as soon as its contents have been approved by the Academy's review process. :F Though Dr. Niels Jerne was appointed a member of the Organizing Committee, he did not participate in the pre-Conference activities and was unable to attend the Conference; consequently he did not share in writing this report.