California Magazine, October 1984

I'VE NEVER MET anyone who ever thought that his world view was influenced by the movies, but just let the subject of genetic engineering crop up, and right away people are thinking "the bug that ate Cleveland." Perhaps this is one of the reasons an environmental activist named Jeremy Rifkin was able to enlist the aid of representatives of such groups as the Humane and Wilderness societies and Friends of the Earth in convincing Federal judge John J. Sirica recently to enjoin two UC Berkeley plant pathologists from spraying genetically altered bacteria on frost-susceptible potato plants. Although the Los Angeles Times called it "a stunning victory for environmental activists," in stopping 'the first release in history of a genetically engineered organism into the environment," the most stunning thing about the experiment was its profound ordinariness. If it hadn't involved recombinant DNA, no one would have heard of it, let alone cared.

Since 1975 botanists have known that plants which would otherwise survive quite sharp frosts would unaccountably freeze and die when certain common bacteria, known as Pseudomonas syringae, were present on the leaves. These bacteria (nicknamed "Ice Plus") carry on their surfaces a protein which serves as a nucleation center for the formation of ice crystals. When it is present, a plant that might otherwise survive to as low as 23 degrees Fahrenheit will start - to freeze at 31 degrees, killing the plant and allowing the bacteria to thrive on the dead tissue. In 1982 two researchers working with plant pathologists Steven Lindow and Nicholas Panopoulos discovered that of the 4,000 or so genes along a strand of Ice Plus DNA, only one gene caused the formation of the ice crystals. To Lindow and Panopoulos, this suggested an immediate plan of action¾clip out the offending gene with gene splicing and produce an Ice Minus strain of bacteria, a strain identical to Ice Plus but without the gene for freezing water.

Lindow and Panopoulos spent the next year working on this in their lab, and by 1983 they were getting pretty dramatic results, one of which Lindow photographed and has framed on the wall above his desk. The photograph shows two potato, plants growing side by side. The one on the right, sprayed with Ice Minus, is vibrantly green and healthy, while the untreated one on the left is so charred and shriveled it looks more napalmed than frozen.

Since this was dramatic proof of the viability of the technique, the next step was a field trial. If it worked as well there, it would have potentially enormous consequences for agriculture. Excluding the U.S.S,R. and China, worldwide crop losses due to frost total something like $14 billion every year. A frost two years ago totally wiped out the peach crop in New Jersey. When a similar freeze hit the Brazilian coffee fields in the late seventies, coffee prices shot up all over the world.

In the fall of 1982, as required by institutions which receive federal research funds, Lindow and Panopoulos applied to the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for permission to conduct field trials on potato plants in five locations throughout California. Suggesting that they scale it down to a single, quarter-acre test plot at Tulelake in northern Siskiyou County, the committee unanimously approved the project in April 1983, whereupon the scientists promptly made plans to test the bacterial strain during the early fall frosts. At the time, neither one of them had even heard of Jeremy Rifkin.

Rifkin is an author and a critic of technology who, according to profiles in the New York Times and the Washington Post, disdains dishwashers, typewriters and automated bank tellers. A former Vista volunteer, during the sixties and seventies he organized an antiwar rally, a mock war-crimes trial and what he called the "People's Bicentennial Commission," an antibusiness alternative to official celebrations. In 1977, concerned with the possible abuses of genetic engineering, he began writing books on the subject (Algeny and Who Should Play God?). He was a formidable opponent. After years of activism and eight books, he knew how to use his wide range of contacts to build coalitions, manipulate the media and, as the New York Times put it, "strike fast with a press release."

Calling Lindow and Panopoulos's proposed experiment "ecological roulette," Rifkin lined up the support of several environmental groups and filed suit against the NIH, claiming it was endangering the planetary gene pool with its unilateral decision. According to Rifkin, the specific strain of bacteria which Lindow and Panopoulos planned to alter in their experiment has been found high in the atmosphere, where it may play a significant role in the precipitation of rain and snow. If these useful bacteria are superseded by a more aggressive daughter organism, some scientists believe it could dramatically reduce rainfall, with results ranging from a shorter skiing season to worldwide drought. At the very least, it could dramatically upset the ecological equilibrium of Tulclake by extending the growing season of some plants.

Furthermore, says Rifkin, as far as he can tell, "no one," least of all NIH, has ever done a study of the possible dangers of such an experiment. "I don't think it's overly inappropriate to ask for one study." We blundered into the petrochemical and nuclear ages without first adequately assessing the risks, he warns, and now our children will be paying for it the rest of their lives. So far the recombinant genie is still in the bottle. This time, for once, let's do it right.

Having had no time to resolve the lawsuit in the short time remaining before the end of the growing season, Lindow and Panopoulos voluntarily suspended the experiment until the spring of 1984. But when spring came with still no results, they announced plans to proceed with their experiment. Rifkin promptly returned to court, where judge Sirica, to everyone's surprise, issued a preliminary injunction against both the University of California and NIH.

Rifkin had always maintained that he had filed the original suit to force a public debate not only on the safety issue but also on the question of whether "we even want this kind of research." And judge Sirica agreed that NIH had neglected to make a full scale study of the possible environmental effects of what he maintained was its program for deliberately releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment. Hurrying to catch up, the National Academy of Sciences decided to seek funding to make its own study of the same subject. And the EPA began preparing a draft document on the implications of genetic engineering, while the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy began a cabinet-level review to decide on how best to regulate the field. As for the scientists, they got so many requests from reporters and camera crews they could barely tend to housekeeping at the lab, not that they had any pressing work to do.

Although both Steven Lindow and Nicholas Panopoulos make an effort not to say anything that might exacerbate the situation, they deeply resent the implication that their NIH application was inadequately documented or ill conceived. "It wasn't something that was written on the knee," says Panopoulos. 'It took me three months to prepare." Panopoulos is especially passionate in his denunciation of those scientists who, at Rifkin's urging, attacked the wisdom of his experiment without even having read the application. As he repeatedly emphasizes, all he and Lindow were proposing was an extremely limited and very minor experiment involving garden-variety organisms. And yet the way their critics reacted, you would think they were planning to spray "the entire North American continent with bacteria."

Lindow and Panopoulos hardly look the part of the mad scientist. The walls of Dr. Lindow's small, cluttered office outside his campus laboratory is covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, plant photographs and Scotch-taped computer printouts. There are two bamboo plants and a coleus on the windowsill, and his and Panopoulos's desks are stacked high with overlapping papers and carousel trays of color slides. He dresses in cowboy shirts and the sort of comfortable work shoes worn by gas-station attendants at the self-serve Montgomery Ward. He's 33 years old with a round face, a neat, brown beard and the slightly weary manner of someone who has answered too many similar questions from too many persistent reporters. Panopoulos, in contrast, has an air of continental sophistication. Small, lean and neatly dressed, he wears tinted aviator glasses and has an extra-long nail on the little finger of his right hand.

Unlike Lindow, who "tries to stay out of politics," Panopoulos condemns those critics who glibly compare genetic engineering to Three Mile Island, pointing out that one involves the large-scale commercial exploitation of a technology, while the other is pure scientific experimentation. He says he agrees wholeheartedly that the commercial application of genetically engineered organisms should be subject to governmental supervision and control. As a matter of fact, he points out, as many as five government agencies are now vying for the privilege of regulating the commercial uses of recombinant DNA. But to have a federal judge step in and prohibit universities from conducting field trials of DNA is quite another matter. To tell a plant pathologist that some experiments are too dangerous to be tried is like telling a philosopher that some ideas are too dangerous to be thought.

Originally, Lindow and Panopoulos had hoped to do the experiment in the fall of 1983. By the time all the lawsuits are settled, it could easily take another two years. In the meantime, some of the small genetic engineering firms that want to apply this technique could easily go out of business, while waiting in the wings is the Japanese juggernaut with its vast experience in fermentation technology.

Panopoulos seems somewhat astonished by the dire consequences some people have predicted from the minuscule amount of everyday bacteria that they plan to spray on a couple of hundred potato plants in a dry lake bed in Northern California. "Peter Jennings on the evening news described our experiment as involving 'new life-forms with potentially catastrophic effects,'" he says. In fact, he points out, this particular life-form has been around for millions of years. The genetically altered bacteria which the scientists plan to spray on the potato plants are a naturally occurring mutant strain of Pseudomonas syringae, Furthermore, although it seems to have escaped the attention of most of their critics, Lindow has already performed the experiment, using naturally mutant strains of Ice Minus or ones which he altered with chemical (as opposed to gene splicing) techniques. "Experiment 'A! has been done," says Panopoulos. "Experiment 'A Prime' is being proposed." Why should one of two identical experiments be considered unsafe depending on the way the bacteria were altered?

As far as the Ice Minus version of Pseudomonas syringae somehow escaping off Tulelake and taking over the world, that's not how biological control works, according to Panopoulos. Normal ultraviolet radiation from the sun causes Ice Minus mutations all the time. If there were any risk that Ice Minus would take over the world, it would have done it millions of years ago. It isn't because Ice Minus is more aggressive than Ice Plus that it survives, but simply because it's sprayed on the plant (or even the seeds) before Ice Plus has a chance to establish itself. "You don't need to be aggressive," says Panopoulos. "You just have to get there first. It's what we call the 'competitive exclusion principle.' There's only so much food to go around and so many chairs in which to sit."

As for Peter Jennings's contention on the evening news that the experiment involves "a new life-form," Panopoulos says such a statement could only have been made by someone who knows nothing about biology. "I don't know what color your eyes are, but mine are blue. If we have different colored eyes, that means we differ by one gene." Now, says Panopoulos, you tell me. "Does that make you 'a new life form?"