A Voluntary Moratorium

Sheldon Krimsky details the events surrounding the 1974 call for a voluntary moratorium that produced the following year’s Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA. Krimsky explains the roels that Paul Berg and David Baltimore came to play in publishing the initial call and some of the uncertainties and disputes within the research community that produced it. The chapter illustrates how the call for a voluntary moratorium on recombinant DNA research represented a negotiation between members of the research community who did not fully agree on the desirability of a moratorium or what such a moratorium should prohibit. Krimsky also argues that the result of this negotiation was a mode of technological assessment oriented toward risks. Because these risks were deeply unknown, the prediction and management of risks could only be “quasi-scientific.” Researchers placed the burden of prediction on those who believed there were risks to research, thereby reducing their own responsibility for risk identification and management. Overall, the chapter complicates the usual narrative that the scientific community tells about the events surrounding Asiolmar and the successes of scientific self-governance.