From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!tektronix!tekmdp!dadla!dadla-a!steve
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Modified E. Coli
Article-I.D.: dadla-a.296
Posted: Wed Feb 16 14:19:03 1983
Received: Mon Feb 21 06:31:00 1983

With respect to Kurt Guntheroth's paranoia about the CDC in Atlanta,
it is mostly unfounded.

When recombinant DNA research began, all such researchers in the world
got together (about 1971 or so) to talk about the dangers. They decided
(and later actually did) to use a weakened strain of Escheria Coli for
their experimentation. Then everyone in the world voluntarily ceased
their research while one installation came up with it. Now everyone
uses it. Among its other problems, it is killed by direct sunlight
in a short time (unlike natural E. Coli), it requires several very
obscure chemicals (not available in nature) or it cannot live, and
so on. It took 18 months of long hard work to mutate E. Coli into
this weakened state, and the possibility of a sufficient number of
mutations occurring in the few hours that they would survive in
case of accidental release to keep some alive (with possibly harmful
genes within) is vanishingly small. Dig it - Biological engineers
don't want to die any more than you do, and they work with the stuff
directly!

After this proposal by the biologists themselves, several government
agencies around the world reviewed the proposals and approved them.
While this does not necessarily prove anything, it does tend to help
in my mind.