28 MAY 1977, Page 10

Voices against science

Nicholas von Hoffman

Washington The news this week has been revolving around our metastasising technology. In New Hampshire 1400 peoplesubmitted themselves to arrest in order to stop construction of an atomic energy generating plant along the coast. In Washington there were busloads of placard-carrying former fatties and diabetics protesting the government's initial moves toward the prohibition of saccharin. In another part of the laboratory, the scientists were pulling each other's smocks off over recombinant DNA research. The courts were ruling that women who contracted vaginal cancer because their mothers had been given a dangerous hormone preparation during pregnancy would not be able to sue successfully for damages. On top of that it was announced that 86,000 diaphragms were being recalled for fear they have holes in them. All in all not a terribly good fortnight.

The scientists brought much of the recombinant DNA debate down on themselves by holding a conference at Asilomar, California, in February 1976, at which they made large numbers of laymen aware for the first time that it was now technically possible for the boys in white to make purple people-eaters or infinitely expanding grey blobs. In more formal language, recombinant DNA could be described as putting the genetic material from one organism into a second and different organism. The fear is that, while pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, an ill-starred researcher will invent a deadly bacillus which some order of life, perhaps man or chickens or merely the humble carrot, will be powerless to resist.

As a result of the Asilomar meeting the federal government as well as a number of local jurisdictions has been at work formulating safety regulations for lab work. This in turn has irritated the scientists, who think the risks have been largely exaggerated. 'What started out as an attempt of the scientific community to appear responsible fakes on increasingly the aspect of a black comedy,' complains James Watson, who won half a Nobel Prize for his work in describing DNA and the double helix.

As if the dangers, real or imagined, inherent in purely scientific recombinant DNA weren't enough, the major drug and chemical companies are playing with the techniques as well. Presumably they are looking to invent a hyperactive germ that will wash, scrub and rinse the pots and pans as well as the dishes, dry them and put them away. The side effect is that they may kill your children, but only your younger ones — under five — in whom you've accumulated a very modest capital investment. Naturally this classically tragic American dilemma of having to choose between convenience and the loss of a child will induce the theologians to hold forth and dilate in journals, sacred and profane. We are on our way to suffering an abundance of magazine articles with titles like Was the. fifth day of creation for keeps or does man have a better idea?'

The public as a whole probably has yet to fix on the recombinant DNA dispute because so many other man-made dangers seem closer at hand. The battle over saccharin is but one skirmish in the battle between man and man-manufactured environment. It's difficult to tell who is sinning in a country where 'only three major causes of death have significantly increased in the recent past: cancer, homocide and cirrhosis of the liver. Overall deaths from most other causes are decreasing,' as writes Samuel S. Epstein, a physician and research scientist specialising in the toxic and carcinogenic hazards of chemical pollutants. Dr Epstein and a growing number of other investigators are convinced that the cause of the American cancer scourge is primarily environmental. In certain occupations the statistics are quite unsettling. 'An estimated 50 per cent of long-term asbestos-insulation workers die of cancers, and 20 per cent of all long-term asbestos workers die of lung cancer. Approximately 30 per cent of all premature deaths in uranium miners are due to lung cancer. The many other occupations that involve a high risk of cancer include steel workers, miners and smelters, and rubber workers as well as workers in a wide range of petrochemical industries,' Dr Epstein reports.

Add to this the poisoned air in scores of metropolitan areas and the close to 1,800 chemical additives put in the processed, manufactured and packaged food Americans eat and the outlines of the problem begin to make themselves visible. You have to live here to appreciate the seemingly end less series of revelatiOns about accidental yet terrible damage to people, to animals, to flowers, to food supplies, to water, to shrimps and snails. It makes you feel like a civilian caught in a biochemical warfa

attack.re To all this the government's response has been solicitous but uncertain and inconsistent. There are tangles of laws, agencies and administrators. There have been a few successes, notably in cleaning up the nation's polluted lakes and rivers, but the rest of the record is one of hesitance and confusion. In some areas the reasons fa delay and ineffectiveness are technical, bat the government's undistinguished performance arises from a wide and tenaciously held belief that a wholesome and healthy environment is inimical t° prosperity.

Since discussions on the structure Ojt. turn of our institutions are frowned on arl, considered takelessly close to behaving IP an ideological manner, this remarkable con' fession by some of the country's 1110S1 important capitalists goes mostly Ore: marked on. The mass media, which &Ns' the word 'capitalist', merly report that leading members of the business corninnaity believe it would be too expensive to detoxify the environment and the impal muddles • on while the pathologists 0° post-mortems and tell the surviving kin the dear departed was taken off by yet another revulsively novel syndrome.

It is against this background that Americans heard President Carters announcement of his intention to get .the United States out of the plutoninal business. The proliferation of the ability tairj make bombs is regarded as but one bazar,. of a technology that a large, but still Jesse; part of the population has come to think °` as too dangerous to use. Yet here als.° Carter is ambiguous. In March 01 administration okayed a shipment ° uranium of American origin from Spain t° Britain for reprocessing into plutonnon' American industry is extremely unhaPily with the present anti-atomic policy. ClatiTio ing that after they've incurred enormous " and D costs they're now being forbidden °1 make their money back, the managers o! the big nuclear corporations point to fact that the American share of the busines' worldwide has dropped from 80 to 50 Pe's cent in the last ten years. And needless °, add, the West German bitterness at Aine,11_ can attempts to prevent the $10 billions nuclear construction deal with BraziLio matched by businessmen over here va'ise believe their own government cost that the believe If all that weren't enough, a Congri,evssional investigatory committee put °rt hearings showing that women are the v'c, tims of half a million unneeded hYstere,re tomies every year. On the plus side, s" d learning how to joke about Alex HaleY Roots. The word is going around that the poor man shot and killed himself tIP° learning he was an adopted child.